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Copyright iN^_ 

COPWIGHT DEPOSrr. 







MY AMERICAN DIARY 
CLARE SHERIDAN 




CLARE SHERIDAN 

(Photograph by Francis Bruguiere) 



MY 

AMERICAN 

DIARY 



BY 

CLARE SHERIDAN 

Author 0/ "MA7FAIR TO MOSCOW" 



^ 



BONI AND LIVERIGHT 

PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK 



.S5-3 



Copyright, 1922, 
By BoNi AND LrvERiGHT, Inc. 

All rights reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 



MAR 15 '22 

S)CI.A654942 



DEDICATION 



To those I have met in this country 
who have not misunderstood me. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Clare Sheridan Frontispiece 

George Gray Barnard, describing his clois- 
ters to Clare Sheridan 72 

Lady Randolph Churchill 154 

Margaret, who is being brought up in Eng- 
land, like a conventionally proper little 
girl 226 

Dick sailing his battleship in the turbulent 
Mexican river 272 

The "Russian Castle" in the "Land of 
Make-Believe" 302 

"Charlie" in his dressing-gown on his Moor- 
ish sunbathed veranda 340 

"Charlie" tells Dick the story of the 
wrecked ship on the beach .... 348 



VII 



INTRODUCTION 

rHE publication of an American diary requires neither 
apology nor explanation, especially when it is more a 
record than a criticism. Besides, the "best people" seem to 
do it. I have upon my desk an old volume entitled : "Travels 
in the United States, etc., during 1849 and 1850/' by the 
Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortly. It is dedicated with some 
pomp "to the Coimtess of Chesterfield by her most affection- 
ate cousin the authoress." By a strange coincidence we seem 
to have trodden the same paths, and ofttimes our impressions 
are the same. Her experiences in 1850 traveling with her 
little girl are in many ways not dissimilar to mine in 1921 
traveling with my little son. She describes her visits to 
New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc., and 
then she goes to Vera Cruz, Mexico City, Puebla, and many 
other places. She has the unconscious arrogance of a genteel 
aristocrat; she describes the people she meets and writes 
of them as "Ladies and Gentlemen" instead of as "men and 
women." For her there is no Bohemianism and she has no 
perplexities about world movements. Nevertheless she 
expresses a deep interest in Russia and some of her com- 
ments are not without value even in this day. 

I think I zvill allow Lady Emmeline to voice in her own 
mA,d-Victorian language some of m^y oivn opinions. Her 
condescension, her lack of humor and her naivete have 
a charm that I cannot compete with. 

Beginning with New York, she says, "I like the Americans 
more and more, either they have improved wonderfully 
lately or else the criticisms on them have been cruelly exag- 
gerated. They are particularly courteous and obliging; and 
seem, I think, amiably anxious that foreigners should carry 
away a favorable impression of them. As for me — I am 
determined not to be prejudiced, but to judge of them 
exactly as I find them; and I shall most pertinaciously con- 

IX 



INTRODUCTION 

tinue to praise them (if I see no good cause to alter my pres- 
ent humble opinion). I have witnessed but very few isolated 
cases, as yet, of the wonderful habits so usually ascribed to 
them — the superior classes here have almost always excel- 
lent manners, and a great deal of real and natural, as zvell 
as acquired, refinement, and are often besides (which per- 
haps will not be believed in fastidious England) extremely 
distinguishing looking." 

It is ivritten in the spirit of her day and is meant to be 
extremely complimentary. It pleases me to note that I have 
already unconsciously corroborated her remark that : "The 
Americans, I think, are a very inusically inclined people — 
far more naturally so, it strikes me, than we Britishers." 

She tells of meeting ^r. Prescott in Boston. "Prescott 
is one of the most agreeable people I have ever met with — 
as delightful as his own most delightful books. — He tells 
me he has never visited either Mexico or Peru. I am sur- 
prised that the interest in his own matchless works did not 
impel him to go to both." 

I agree with her, it does indeed seem strange. 

But what really interests me is a sidetrack in which she 
launches out in opinions about Russia. She zs/rites : "There 
are but few Russian visitors here in New York, it seems; 
but I am very much struck by the apparent entente-cordialc 
that exists between Russia and the United States. There 
seems an inexplicable instinct of sympathy, some mysterious 
magnetism at work, which is drawing by degrees these tzvo 
mighty nations into closer contact. Napoleon, we knozv, 
prophesied that the world, ere long, would be either Cossack 
or Republican. . . . I cannot resist dwelling a little on this 
interesting subject : Russia is certainly the grand respre- 
scntative pf despotic principles, as the U. S. are the repre- 
sentatives of democratic ones. How is it that these antagon- 
istic principles, embodied in these two mighty governments, 
allow them to be so friendly and cordial towards one an- 

X 



INTRODUCTION 

other? . . . Russia and the U. S. are the two young giant 
nations of the world . . . The Leviathans of the lands! ., . . 
These two grand young nations are strong to the race, and 
fresh to the glorious contest. Far off in the future, centuries 
and ages beyond this present hour, is the culminating point. 
What to other Nations may he ivork and labor, to them is 
but, as it were, healthful relaxation, the exercising of their 
mammoth limbs, the quickening of the mighty current of 
their buoyant and bounding life-blood, the conscious enjoy- 
ment of their own inexhaustible vitality. There is much 
similarity, in short, in the position of these two vast powers. 
. . . She (Russia) has plenty of time, too, before her — 
she can watch and she can wait . . . "" 

// Lady Emmeline had had an American mother, to help 
her to be just a little less English and a little less class- 
conscious, she might have evolved into quite an emancipated 
thinker! 

I cannot help wishing that she, too, had kept a diary, in- 
stead of compiling her book from letters "after adding some- 
what, to give them the usual narrative form," as she says 
'in the preface. Consequently one loses many of the little 
details often illustrative or human that only a daily diary 
can remember to record. Following her travels, I see that 
at Vera Cruz she probably stayed in the same hotel, "In 
the great Plaza, almost close to the fine old Cathedral." In 
comparison with our experience at Vera Cruz hers was not 
so very unlike. They "ran into a Norther" which relieved 
them of the expected heat, but "in spite of all our pre- 
cautions in the night, our balcony-doors blew open, and my 
kitle girl and I were almost blown away, beds and all." 

Her journey to Mexico City is by stage coach; "not far 
from this spot is the beginning of a railroad, which, say 
the Americans, may perhaps be finished in 500 years. It 
is intended to be carried on to Mexico." No doubt it would 
have taken 500 years, but that an English company "butted 

XI 



INTRODUCTION 

in" and so I have been privileged less than 100 years later 
to travel to Mexico on that railway. It can only be said, 
in comparison, that her discomforts were more prolonged. 

Arrived in Mexico, we have a similar experience when 
visiting Chaptdtepec Castle : "The commandant came for- 
ward and very courteously asked if we would like to see 
the views from the flat roof of the castle. . . . What a 
Paradise zvorld we saw . . ., etc." and we have both seen 
the same thing, and thought the same thing, only in different 
words. Lady Emmeline has a more fragrant style. She 
makes an effort, on occasions, to describe scenes that surpass 
mere words: "But it is not, after all, so much the scene 
itself, as the great and boundless story the imagination ever 
lends it; for the soul once awakened, and stirred and thrilled 
by the sight of that magnificent scenery, makes it ten 
thousand fold more glorious. . . . " There is much more 
of this. 

On her way to Puebla she describes how "we soon came 
in sight of the zvonderful and huge pyramid of Cholula, built 
by the Aztecs; it is supposed as a Teocali. A temple to 
Queatzalcoatl formerly stood on it, but now it is 
crowned by a Christian Chapel dedicated to the Madonna. 
. . . With regard to this extraordinary pyramid, I think 
the people zvho coidd be bold enough to become mountain- 
builders zvithin sight of those stupendous volcanoes, Popo- 
catapetl and Itaccihuatl and so many other mighty moun- 
tains, deserve much praise for their almost sublime audacity 

These were exactly my sentiments and I must thank 
Lady Emmeline for having spared me the writing of my 
ozvn introduction. I curtsey to her very charming ghost 
and my great regret is that our paths divide. I cannot 
follow her to Peru, whither she goes from Mexico; and she 
cannot accompany me to Los Angeles, nor shake zvith me 
the hand of Charlie Chaplin. 

XII 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

February 2, 1921. The Biltmore, New York. 

What a funny life ! I do not know myself, nor 
what I have become, and yet when I look in the 
glass I am the same. 

I seem to be a machine — I have no soul ; rapidly 
I am losing all mind. 

From morning till night newspaper reporters 
ask me questions, I am told I have to submit — if I 
were impatient or cross they would write some- 
thing nasty. So I am amiable ! I go on talking the 
same stuff about Lenin and Trotzky! How they 
would laugh if they could hear me! 

I've been photographed in this room, over and 
over; by flashlight, by electric light, by day-light. 
In day dress, in evening dress, in Russian head 
dress, in work dress, with child, with roses, and 
so on! 

I go out to lunch with a reporter in the taxi — 
and what luncheons : hen luncheons in Fifth Ave- 
nue! Lovely women with bare white chests, pearls, 
and tulle sleeves — never saw such clothes — and 
apparently all for themselves. There is never a 
man. They even pay one another compliments. 
I wonder if they can be contented. Today I 
lunched with Rose Post, who is a great kind dear. 

13 



a 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I had a very pleasant woman on my right, but on 
my left was a Mrs. Butler, whose husband is presi- 
dent of Columbia University. She wouldn't speak 
to me— she couldn't bear even to look at me. I 
expect she thought I was a Bolshevik. I went 
from there to see Mrs. Otto Kahn. She received 
me among Boticelli's and tapestries. It was a 
beautiful room, and one had a feeling of repose. 
Money can buy beautiful things, but it cannot buy 
atmosphere, and that was of her own creatmg. It 
felt very restful ; just for a while I was in Italy . . . ! 
She dropped me at the VANITY FAIR Office, and 
I went up to the fifteenth floor and saw Mr. 
Crowninshield and Mr. Conde Nast, editors re- 
spectively of Vanity Fair and Vogue. I knew 
them in London. 

Mr. Heywood Broun, dramatic critic, was there. 
He seemed to have that rather Latin humor, which 
is "moqueur." 

They were all very humorous, and there is a 
good deal to be humorous about at this moment, 
where I am concerned! 

"Crownie" was an angel; he and Mr. Nast de- 
cided to give a dinner for me. A "fun" dinner, all 
of people who "do" things, what he called "tight 
rope dancers" and "high divers"-not social 
swells! He offers me a peace room to write in— a 
lawyer to protect me, and advances of money! 
Truly I have good friends! 
14 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

At six when I got back to the Biltmore, Colin 
Agnew, whose firm gave me an exhibition in Lon- 
don last year, rushed in — he goes to England on the 
Aquitania tomorrow; he says I may have the firm's 
flat on East 55th St. till April! What a godsend: 
a private place in which to lay my weary head, and 
a home for Dick. How happy I shall be! Colin 
says the only trouble is that the heating apparatus 
occasionally breaks down. This is good news, for 
central heating is asphyxiating. If I open the 
windows I freeze, and if I shut them I suffocate. 
Dick drinks ice water all day and says he likes 
America! 

At ten thirty P.M. I was called to the telephone 
by a man who said he was Russian, and member 
of an art club, and asked if he might come and 
fetch me there and then, to take me down to the 
club, as the members would so appreciate me, and 
he thought I should be interested . . . ! I told him 
I wasn't going off in a taxi at that hour with any 
strange man ! 

February 4, 1921. 

I dined with the Rosens, and McEvoy was there, 
also Mr. Louis Wiley, Manager of the New York 
Times. I left hurriedly so as to be at the Aeolian 
Hall in plenty of time. The lecture was at 8:30. 
T found Mr. Heywood Broun there. He had con- 
sented to introduce me and did so by a most charm- 

15 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ing and flattering speech which, as I am a stranger, 
I appreciated very much. An American audience 
is very quick and full of humor. They are on the 
idea before one has had time to get to it oneself. 

I began by pointing out the difficulties of the 
situation. First of all, I said, my severest critic is 
in the house, he has heard me speak, before, and 
he has insisted on being present tonight, — his years 
are five, and if he goes to sleep, I shall know my 
lecture has been dull! (Everyone looked towards 
Dick!) 

When I told of my arrival in Moscow and that 
Mrs. Kameneff met us and upbraided him — they 
never gave me a chance to finish my sentence. The 
whole house laughed, and went on laughing, and 
they laughed all the more at my discomfiture! 
When the laughter subsided I then finished, I said 
that she upbraided him for having brought an 
artist half across Europe, to do portraits at such a 
critical period, and Kamenefif replied that he 
simply did not agree with her. 

Of course there was a large Radical element, 
and so I got a good reception ; they were sympa- 
thetic. I didn't realize they were radicals and in- 
terpreted it as sympathy from the good New 
Yorkers. Whatever element it was they were tol- 
erant and encouraging. When I began about 
Trotzky I forgot my audience, and got carried 
away, I seemed to have touched the magnetic cord 
i6 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to Moscow, straight to Trotzky! I described this 
man of wit, fire and genius — I talked of him as a 
Napoleon of peace! And then, suddenly remem- 
bering, I pulled myself together, hesitated and 
said I wouldn't say any more about Trotzky! 
There were shouts of "go on!" This must have 
come from the radical element — but I was too 
wrought up and fevered to think politically. 

When it was over, Dick joined me on the stage 
amid applause — people came to the footlights, and 
I went down on my knees to talk to my friends who 
came to the edge. Afterwards, on the way out, 
scores of people of all kinds surrounded me. One, 
a woman with a tragic and strong face, said, "Let 
me thank you for being so fair and unprejudiced. 
I am a Communist, I have not yet served my sen- 
tence . . ." Her face was convulsed with emotion 
and traces of suffering . . . there are martyr fan- 
atics. 

The more I look back on what I've done, the 
more it frightens me. I wonder how I ever skated 
on thin ice as I did. 

February 5, 1921. 

Moved into the flat. It is uncomfortable but I 
shall get it right. We are three people and two 
beds, Dick has to sleep on the sofa in my room. 
The telephone is cut off, and the heat does not 

17 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

seem to work, but for these two latter items one is 
thankful ! 

Griffin Barry, who used to be the Russian cor- 
respondent of the London Daily Herald, came 
to fetch me, and took me I don't know where, to a 
studio belonging to Miss Bessie Beatty who has 
written a book on the Russian Revolution. There 
were a lot of people but I only knew Mr. and Mrs. 
Bullitt; he has been to Russia and she is very beau- 
tiful. I met Mr. Kenneth Durant, who is left in 
charge of the Soviet office in the absence of Mar- 
tens. He has an extremely interesting, rather faun- 
like head. We all sat around the room with plates 
on our laps and were fed. It was primitive but an 
extremely good idea, and one I shall adopt if ever 
I want to give a bigger party in my studio than I 
have table space for. 

A certain amount of politics was talked after- 
wards, in which I dared not join. In conservative 
circles I dare not talk politics for fear of being 
called Bolshevik. In Bolshevik circles I keep silent 
for fear they discover how ignorant I am! Durant 
left early, and I had no chance of talking with him. 
He has rather an enigmatic smile, and says very 
little. 

Sunday, February 6, 1921. 

Dick and I spent most of the day out at Yonkers 
with our cousin, Travers Jerome, Jr., and his 
18 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

wife, Joy, who is very good looking. The boy 
child is of the type that mine and Shane Leslie's 
are, so I suppose it's the Jerome blood! My Ameri- 
can family seem to be very nice. Mama often 
wanted to talk about them, but we never would let 
her! 

I dined with Maxine Elliot, and had on one side 
of me Mr. George Creel, and on the other Mr. 
Swope. The latter is the editor of The World, 
but I did not know it at first or I might not have 
said some of the things I did. There is a type of 
American! What force, what energy ("dynamic," 
I said of him to someone. "No — cyclonic!" they 
corrected) ! I asked him, when I was able to get 
a word in edgeways, how he manages to revitalize, 
he seemed to me to expend so much energy. He 
said he got it back from me, from everyone, that 
what he gives out he gets back, it is a sort of circle. 
He was so vibrant that I found my heart thumping 
with excitement as though I had drunk cham- 
pagne, which I hadn't! He talks a lot but talks 
well, is never dull. . . . 

In England one hesitates to accept to dine out 
unless one is very sure who is going to be there. 
Here one can go at random, it may be strange, it 
may be incomprehensible, but never is it dull! I 
wonder if it is simply the novelty of the first weeks 
in America, or is it the interest of continually ex- 
ploring new people — ? 

19 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Monday, February 7, 1921. 13 East ^^th Street. 

Mr. Wiley sent his secretary and his car to con- 
vey me to the TIMES office. There in the building 
we lunched, and I was the only woman with seven 
men, all of them interesting. (An improvement 
on Fifth Avenue with seven women I) Mr. Miller, 
Mr. Ochs, Mr. Ogden, and so on, it was rather 
alarming, but they gave me orchids. I was asked 
a good many questions about Russia, some of them 
economic, which I longed to be able to answer, and 
cursed my mind for not working on those lines. I 
was told that Russia had nothing to trade with, a 
limited supply of gold; furs that were motheaten, 
grain that was rotten, aluminium that was full of 
alloy. I could not dispute these assertions, know- 
ing nothing about it, but I had to laugh, it seemed 
to end the argument! After lunch I was shown 
the machinery which is too marvelous and com- 
plicated for words. I don't see how a newspaper 
ever gets printed in a day. Upstairs in the illustrat- 
ing part, I caught sight of myself on a copper 
plate. I had not expected this. They printed one 
for me, and it came out all folded and still hot at 
the other end. Too marvelous! 

I dined at a big dinner given for me at the 
Coffee House Club by Mr. Crowninshield and Mr. 
Conde Nast. I sat next to Paul Manship, whose 
work I have known for some time. Mr. Bullitt 
and Mrs. Whitney, the sculptor, sat opposite. 
20 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Maxine Eliott was at my table, and Mr. Harrison 
Rhodes, the writer, who has been described to me 
as "precieux" but I like him. He is more European 
than anyone I have met. We were four big tables 
full, and there were speeches after. Mr. Crown- 
inshield in an even quiet voice was very funny. 

Lopokova, the exquisite little Russian dancer 
whom London adores, spoke in Russian. She said 
she believed in Russia and believed in me! After 
dinner they played charades. Mr. Crowninshield 
and I did Trotzky. It was to be in three acts. 
First, I was to be a trotting horse, and he driving 
me. Second, we were to ski, and fall down. Third, 
he was to harangue the Red Army and I was to 
throw my arms round his neck and passionately 
embrace him, but Maxine guessed it at the second 
act, so Mr. Crowninshield was done out of his 
Trotzky kiss. 

Tuesday, February 8, 1921. 

Paul Manship called for me and took me to his 
studio which is near Washington Square in a side 
alley that used to contain stables. The moment 
one turned into that side alley one had left New 
York! He has a beautiful studio and house, and his 
work is modern and archaic and has a great sense 
of design. It interested me to discover how he 
gets his surfaces and the feeling of the thing be- 

21 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ing carved; this is done by working on the plaster. 
He is going to have an exhibition in London at the 
Leicester Galleries in the spring. I shall be very 
interested to know the result. I am sorry for the 
artist who goes from here to London, instead of 
from London here. 

I dined with Mr. Archer Huntington in the 
most lovely house. A real man's house, no knick- 
knacks. There were some Goya's that arrested 
one's attention. 

We were a small party, or else the house was so 
big, and we all seemed rather English and talked 
low and there was a calm that was unlike New 
York. I found my host treated me rather like 
Lenin did, smilingly and lightly, as if I were not 
very serious. But he takes me seriously evidently, 
for he is arranging an exhibition for me at the 
Museum of the American Numesmatic Society. 

Wednesday, February 9, 1921. 

I spent a quiet day, as it was my lecture after- 
noon. I suffer so beforehand that I am almost ex- 
hausted. 

My audience, it being the afternoon, was of a 
different type. There were more women and 
fewer Radicals. They were less light in hand and 
more serious. I find I take my mood from my 
audience, and the psychology of an audience seems 
to vary. Mr. Edwin Markham, the poet who 
wrote "The Man With the Hoe," introduced me 
22 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

and sat by my side on the stage during the lecture. 
He has a head rather like Longfellow. 

Afterwards some of the audience came down to 
the reception room, Lopokova who was there told 
me I had done well, and embraced me quite emo- 
tionally. I was glad to get that opinion from her. 
People came and asked me all kinds of questions 
and one, a formidable looking woman in a leather 
coat, asked if I was in favor of the same methods 
prevailing here as in Moscow. I was very indig- 
nant and said she had no right to ask me such a 
direct political question, that it was unjustifiable. 
She apologized and melted away. Travers Jerome 
and his mother then rescued me and took me some- 
where quickly to tea. 

It is a curious thing how people without imagi- 
nation can waylay one both on one's way in and on 
one's way out from lecturing, trying to fix some 
social engagement. On the way in one is absorbed 
by the thought of what one is going to say. On 
the way out one is too weary to exert one's mind 
in such a direction. 

Yet people are very kind. I don't know if they 
love me or are interested in Russia. I should think 
neither. 

Mr. Liveright, my publisher, fetched me and 
took me to the Ritz where we dined with Mr. 
Pulitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Swope, and Mr. B. M. 
Baruch. Mr. Pulitzer looks much too young to be 

23 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the owner of The WORLD and has the face of a well 
bred Englishman. Mr. Baruch (whose name I 
mistook for Brooke) has white hair, fine features 
and stands 6 ft. 4. I gathered from the general 
conversation that I was talking to someone whom I 
should have heard of, and as I could think of no 
distinguished Brooke but Rupert Brooke the poet, 
I asked if he was related. And then Mr. Baruch 
rather reprovingly spelt his name for me. In- 
stantly by a faint glimmer of memory ''Wall 
Street" came to my mind, and I seemed to have 
heard in London that he was a friend of Winston. 
He was interesting and unprejudiced. Most of 
these brilliant men are unprejudiced about Russia 
when one talks to them individually. It is the same 
in England. 

They took me to the first night of the Mid- 
night Frolic, This seemed to be in a theatre that 
never stops. It was with some difficulty disgorg- 
ing the people who had just witnessed the eve- 
ning performance and struggling to let in the peo- 
ple who were arriving for the midnight show. It 
was a strange place, a sort of dancing supper 
restaurant, where a stage rolled out and the artists 
walked about and danced and sang "familiar"-like 
among the people. I suppose it appeals awfully to 
the mankind. Such an arrangement would be 
a huge success in London. The actresses were 
pretty, well dressed, and show after show suc- 

24 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ceeded one another in rapid procession, leaving one 
bewildered and almost breathless. We stayed far 
into the night, but it was still going strong when 
we went away. I wonder if that is where the busy 
American business man goes when his day's work 
is done. If so, he reminds me of Tchicherin's pro- 
posed secretary, who "works during the day, so 
he is free at night . . ." 

Thursday, February io, 1921. 

Lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Whigham. He is 
the editor of ToWN AND COUNTRY and is a Scotch- 
man. It was one of the nicest parties I've been to, 
absolutely after my own heart. I sat next to Jo 
Davidson, whom I'd wanted to meet, Mrs. Whit- 
ney was there, and McEvoy and Mr. Harrison 
Rhodes and Guardiabasse, the singer and painter. 
All were people who do things. 

Mr. Davidson astonished me. I had expected 
someone very American, but he looks like a black- 
bearded Bolshevik, speaks French like a French- 
man, and speaks it preferably, and has lived for 
years in Moscow. He is just a typical interna- 
tional. He has a keen sense of humor, cosmopoli- 
tan manners, and the American quick grasp of 
things. I found myself talking to him as if we had 
known each other all our lives. He said laugh- 
ingly that he had read my diary in the Times and 

25 



MY AMERICAN DIARY _ 

had hated me from that moment. Hated me for 
having done this thing! He said of course he 
would have done it if the chance had come his way, 
but we agreed that it was a woman's chance. 
Trotzky never would have been good with any- 
one but me! We think we'll go back there to- 
gether, hand in hand. 

I went away with McEvoy, and on the way 
down in the lift he said, "What a nice party that 
was, quite like England!" I agreed, and the half 
suppressed giggle of the lift boy roused me to add 
for his benefit that we meant it as a compliment. 
I wonder if the lift boy by any chance was Irish! 

February ii, 1921. 

I had a Christian Herald reporter at eleven, 
and two AMERICAN Hebrew reporters at twelve. 
They were all of them intelligent. Then Hugo K. 
turned up in the middle of it all, and I just aban- 
doned the Hebrews. I took H. to lunch with Mr. 
Liveright and two gentlemen of the film indus- 
try. I believe they wanted to see my face. I do 
not believe it lends itself to filming and I am much 
too big, but still it was interesting to meet them 
and one got a new point of view. 

I dined with the Misses Cooper Hewitt, daugh- 
ters of Abram Hewitt, once Mayor of New York, 
quite a different atmosphere from any other in New 
York). Real old world, and most of the people I 
26 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

met talked to me about my family, remembered 
my grandfather and seemed to have loved my aunts. 

February 12, 1921. 

Finished my introduction for "Mayfair to Mos- 
cow" at one o'clock while Mr. Liveright's mes- 
senger waited in the hall for it. 

At eight I dined with Mr. Wiley, and found my 
own photograph framed between Lenin's and 
Trotzky's. A delicate compliment which I ap- 
preciated and no one else noticed! The party con- 
sisted of the Gerards, Col. and Mrs. House, the 
Walter Rosens, Arthur Pollen, the English naval 
expert, and some others. Pollen held the table for 
some time on the subject of disarmament and the 
attitude of England, and was rather dogmatic. It 
was impossible to argue as he raised his voice and 
seemed to resent controversy. I sat next to Mr. 
Gerard and felt he was still the distinguished con- 
spicuous U. S. Ambassador to Berlin of 1916 — but 
he is like a war book — one has lost interest. He 
told us, however, that Mr. Harding had told him 
that he means to invite the European premiers to 
Washington to confer on peace. Everyone seemed 
agreed that it was a grand idea ; everyone seemed 
agreed also that it was rnadness to have so utterly 
destroyed the Central Powers. There was a gen- 
eral "down" on France. 

Mr. Pollen was right about the crumbling Eu- 

27 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

rope and the necessity for peace and agreement all 
round. 

After dinner I had a little talk with Col. House 
whom I found very sane-minded about Russia. 

He agreed with me that I was right not to be 
drawn into political arguments, as he said it would 
do no good, and I would be misunderstood. 

February 13, 1921. 

I lunched with "The Kingfisher" as we call Mrs. 
Cornelius Vanderbilt in London! I was rather 
disappointed with her Fifth Avenue Palazzo, it 
does not compare with the Otto Kahns and has 
not the atmosphere. There was a beautiful Turner 
in one of the drawing rooms, and a gallery full of 
Corots and Millets, but they were not very inter- 
esting or decorative, or else there were too many 
of them. I sat next to my host whose trim beard 
and uncommunicative, rather unsmiling counte- 
nance reminded me of a Bolshevik type that I 
used to see at the Kremlin table d'hote. He only 
needed shabby clothes and his beard a little less 
trim. It made me think how good looking some 
of the Bolsheviks would be if they were million- 
aires. 

After lunch when the women left the dining 
room some one hazarded a remark to the effect 
that the big rooms were pleasant with nobody in 
them. Our hostess said that was not an idea with 
28 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

which she was in sympathy, that she thought a big 
house should be full of people and as many enjoy 
it as possible, "whatever I have I want to share," 
she said, and then turning to me, "Please tell that 
to the Bolsheviks — " I asked her why I should con- 
vey any such message, — she evidently mistook me 
for a messenger of the gods. Then suddenly, con- 
versation drifted onto me and my plans. I was 
asked if when I returned I was going to live in 
Ireland, hadn't my father got a place there? I 
answered that I lived where there was work, and, 
therefore, I might remain where I was, or go to 
Russia. Mrs. Vanderbilt looked rather surprised, 
and asked whether Russia paid better than any 
other country. That I did not know, but certain 
it is that any country pays more than England! 
This subject of payment seemed suddenly to excite 
her — , in a tremulously querulous voice, whilst the 
other women sat silently, I stood up in front of the 
fireplace and was cross-questioned, and nagged as 
to that payment. Who had paid me? Had Lenin 
and Trotzky paid me? What did I call govern- 
ment money? Whose money was it and where 
did it come from? I said I did not know, indeed 
I felt a great longing to be able to explain as she 
seemed so keen — but how could I tell where the 
money came from for which I had to give a receipt 
to the "All Russian Central Executive Committee 
of Soviets . . ." for a cheque signed Litvinoff, 

29 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

(whose bust I had not done) for payment through 
a Stockholm bank? 

Mrs. Vanderbilt thought it was dreadful, and 
said that I upset her very much. She said that Mr. 
Wilson's government did not and could not do 
things like that! It occurred to me that probably 
there is very little similarity between the methods 
of Mr. Wilson's government and those of the Rus- 
sian Soviet, but who can prove that the Wilson 
form of government is right anyway? 

Altogether it was rather unpleasant, and I left 
as soon as I could, and wondering, as I walked 
home, why she had asked me to her house. 

I fear I must have irritated her from the start, 
because when she asked me to lunch there was no 
address on her card, and no telephone number in 
the book; so when I answered I addressed it as 
best I could to: Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, New 
York, adding a little message: "Please, postman, 
deliver this somewhere in Fifth Avenue." 

February 14, 1921. William Penn Hotel, 

Pittsburgh 
Ruth Djirloff, my secretary, waked me up by 
telephoning to me that it was twenty of seven. I 
do dislike that Americanism "of" especially when 
I am not awake and I have to make a special ef- 
fort to remember if "of" means before or after. 
Having roused myself to the realization that it was 

30 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

twenty to seven, I waked Louise, who got some 
breakfast for me. I did not wake Dick and was 
rather glad that his sleeping gave me an excuse 
not to say goodbye to him. It is easier so. I have 
left them all alone in the flat, just those two. If 
Louise died in the night how would anybody know, 
and how would Dick get out or make anyone hear? 
These are not things to think of. Providence will, 
I know, take care of me to the end. 

We drove to a railway station that was like an 
opera house and heated. What civilization — 1 I 
should think the poor would come in there to get 
out of the cold. Perhaps they're not allowed; or 
perhaps like me, they prefer air. We caught the 
8 :o5 train to Pittsburgh. A ten hour journey. The 
train was very comfortable and I slept most of the 
way and ate nothing, being thankful for the rest 
from food. I read most of "Men and Steel" by 
Mary Heaton Vorse, published by my publisher. 
It is very powerful, and conveys its force through 
its great simplicity and crispness of style. It im- 
pressed me tremendously but I wished I had not 
read it as it forms my judgment for me before I 
even arrive. 

These are some of the facts: "72% of all steel 
workers are below the level set by government ex- 
perts as minimum of comfort level set for families 
of five," which means that three-quarters of the 
steel workers cannot earn enough for an American 

31 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

standard of living. "In 19 19 the undivided sur- 
plus was $493,048,201.93, or $13,000,000 more than 
the total wage and salary expenditures" of the 
U. S. Steel Corporation. I cannot take in eco- 
nomics; if I discussed this with a capitalist I 
should have refuting statistics thrown at my head 
and I wouldn't take it in. But I wonder why it is, 
that, crudely and ignorantly, I always feel the 
workers' point of view, rather than the employers. 
At 6:50, on my arrival, I was received by Mr. 
and Mrs. Robinson and their son, who are man- 
agers in the firm of Heinz Pickles, 57 varieties 1 
Emil Fuchs, who is doing a Heinz memorial, 
told them I was coming. They had a car and 
drove me to the William Penn Hotel. I refused 
their invitation to dinner as I felt rather tired. 
After dinner some reporters came to see me in my 
room. Oh, I am so weary of the same questions 
about Lenin and Trotzky! I wish I dared tell 
them what I really think. 

February 15, 1921. 

Mrs. Robinson fetched me at ten A.M. and 
took me first for a drive in the town and then to 
the Heinz factory. The town is built at the junc- 
tion of two rivers, so it can only spread up and not 
out. The sun was struggling to break through the 
mist of grime caused by the factory smokes. Mrs. 
Robinson apologized for the lack of beauty of the 
32 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

town. She was wrong, it was terribly beautiful. 
Everything looked like a Whistler picture, but of 
course there is no color, no nature, and one longs 
for these things after a time. 

When we drove to the Heinz factory we went 
in first to the Administration Building; the hall 
of which is lined with marble, has marble columns, 
a fountain in the middle, marble busts on pedestals 
all around, and a frieze by an English artist, rep- 
resenting the various Heinz processes, Mr. Rob- 
inson came and appointed a guide to show us all 
over. It is the first factory I have ever seen that 
was interesting. It really is wonderful to see the 
flat piece of tin go into the machine, become round 
and soldered, move along to have its bottom put 
on, and without stopping, go careering along over- 
head and down to the next floor to be mechanically 
filled with baked beans, and have its lid put on. 
From the moment the flat piece of tin gets into 
the machine to the moment when it is sealed up 
full is four and a quarter minutes. The tin manu- 
facturing room was delightful, little bright, glist- 
ening, shining tins, ran, rolled and leapt, as it 
seemed, overhead and all round, dancing fairy- 
like to the music and hum of the machinery. The 
space over one's head was full of them, impelled 
in dififerent directions at different speeds on differ- 
ent levels, on little iron ways. The process itself 
interested me, but when I had grasped the process, 

33 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I just stood in the middle of the hall and gave way 
to the impression of the whole, and it had the ef- 
fect of making me laugh outright, it was so ridicu- 
lously joyous. 

Mr. Robinson's son, who is foreman in one of 
the departments, led me to a window and pointed 
out a little one-storied house in which Trotzky 
had lived and had a newspaper plant. Trotzky 
must have been a long time over here to have in- 
habited all the houses that claim him! 

It was now twenty of one o'clock A.M. I have 
just returned from a marvelous evening at the 
Chalfont Steel Pipe works. I dined with Miss 
Chalfont. She had asked me whether I'd like a 
big party or not. I said I'd like to go to see the 
works, so she arranged that no one should dress for 
dinner and we went, a party of seven, first to the 
"residence" where the welfare workers live — a 
very nice house indeed — (there were three repro- 
ductions of Gainsborough and Reynold's pictures 
of the "Beautiful Mrs. Sheridan"). Then to the 
cinema which is for the workers, and then to see 
the mill. 

I have come away with a feeling of bewilder- 
ment . . . the noise, the power, the heat, men who 
did not seem to count worked machinery that 
seemed human. 

It was terrible when a lever opened the furnace 
door and a giant red hot tube like a gun barrel was 
34 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

gently but firmly impelled along by iron fingers 
and pushed into the fire mouth upon which a door 
closed. It was relentless — like the hand of Destiny. 
When the cylinder came out at the other end 
and passed through a fountain of cold water, the 
cold on the heat produced explosive noises like 
great guns in a battle and we had to dodge the 
shower of sparks. 

Strange looking men were the workers, mostly 
Slovaks, and Italians. The Chalfonts are rather 
proud of the good feeling that exists between them 
and their workers. I saw no faces of disaffection, 
but I minded being looked upon by them as a 
curious idler — did they but know ... 1 

February i6, 1921. Pittsburgh 

Went to the Carnegie Museum where the cura- 
tor, Mr. Douglas Stuart, took me a quick rush 
through. It was terribly American of me to make 
such a hustling tour, but un-American of me not 
to be more thorough. Truth to tell, I had an ap- 
pointment for three-fifteen with the Women's 
Press Club, where I was to be the guest of honor. 
The museum was very interesting and I longed to 
stay longer. Chiefly I noticed a marble vase 
carved with figures, by Barnard. This is the sculp- 
tor who did the Lincoln there was so much con- 
troversy about in England. There were some fine 
pictures. A Whistler (The Man with the Violin), 

35 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

an Orpen which took a gold medal! The Duchess 
of Rutland, by Blanche, a propos of which Mr. 
Stuart was rather amusing: He had been away 
on vacation and knew nothing of the Society's pur- 
chase of pictures abroad; imagine his bewilder- 
ment when he received a cable, "Duchess of Rut- 
land completely covered — Lloyds." I saw some 
magnificent casts of French cathedral fronts, in the 
architecture room, but I had to leave and go to my 
Women's Press Club. It was a terrifying moment 
when I walked into McCreery's restaurant and 
found what seemed to me to be about forty women 
sitting in a solemn circle. I was introduced all 
round, and then told that "a few words" were ex- 
pected of me. 

For nearly two hours after that I was questioned, 
and I answered to the best of my ability. Some- 
times the questions interested me, — almost always 
they were intelligent. 

I dined with Mr. Robinson who took me to see 
the Heinz glass factory afterwards. 

Thursday, February 17, 1921. Pittsburgh. 

Mr. Robinson fetched me at i : 30 and, with the 
foreman manager of the Carnegie Steel Works, 
we drove out to Duquesne. It took about three- 
quarters of an hour to get there — this district 
seemed to be even more business-like, and to con- 

36 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

tain far more blast furnace towers even than 
Pittsburgh. 

For nearly three hours we went over these mills. 
Our cicerone was intelligent and interesting, but I 
vainly tried to follow the processes. I have car- 
ried away a nebulous idea. 

First we saw the furnace where the iron soil is 
poured in and becomes molten. It runs out in a 
great channel of liquid fire which pours itself into 
an iron tank. The clinker, which is lighter and 
remains on the surface, is stopped by a sieve and 
diverted into another channel; thus the two sepa- 
rate. There are seven miles of cold clinker where 
it has been thrown out, great banks of it on which 
a track line has been built. While we were there 
the aperture of the furnace got choked up so the 
stream of fire had stopped. We watched the men 
with huge long pokers that required three men to 
move, trying to open up the aperture. After a 
few minutes the poker that came out was so short 
that one man could handle it. This happened sev- 
eral times. There were magnificent Czecho- 
slovaks and a colored man working together on 
this. Their clinging, soaking shirts revealed their 
young, strong, conditioned bodies. The sweat 
poured from them. They worked rhythmically 
and almost leisurely, as though this thing went 
on forever and therefore there was no hurry. 
They were like dramatic pantomime actors, 

37 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

they never spoke. The sound of the hissing, 
spitting, shrieking furnace drowned all human 
efforts of sound. Seldom had a furnace mouth 
remained choked as long as this one. I 
wondered why we waited so long for nothing to 
happen, but our guide, who knew what we were 
waiting for, did not attempt to draw us away. 
Meanwhile the men probed with their iron instru- 
ments, all in vain. To me it seemed like some 
gigantic creature shrieking and protesting that 
something was wrong. Suddenly, as we stood 
there, a great roar and hissing and vomiting, and 
the flow of orange liquid fire burst forth with a 
great rush. As the stream proceeded along its 
course fire-work stars rose up and danced in the air 
above it, stars that burst, fairy-like, and illusive, 
and almost insolently flippant. At night it must 
be very spectacular. But I had been refused ad- 
mittance at night, and even as a day visitor I was 
told I was the first woman admitted in ten years 
! 

We proceeded to follow the liquid through its 
other processes — though not all, for at the end of 
three hours we were not through. But my head 
was swimming with sounds and sights, it was as 
though one had spent half a day in Dante's Inferno. 
Moreover my legs were as weary as my head, and 
though I had meant to be back at five, it was six 
when I w^alked through the William Penn Hotel! 

38 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

The attention I seemed to draw made me wonder 
whether in those few hours fame had overtaken 
me in the press, but when I reached my room and 
saw my black face in the glass, I understood the 
stir I had created in the elevator! 

The press resolutely seemed to have a parti- 
pris against me. In spite of all my efforts to be 
agreeable and interesting to the reporters who 
came to interview me, nothing of sufficient import- 
ance ever appeared to attract the faintest notice of 
my existence or my lecture. Either it was an anti- 
British feeling, or more likely, that industrial cap- 
italistic Pittsburgh had not the faintest desire to 
hear anything whatever about Lenin or Trotzky 
that was not vituperative. 

With great weariness, and great discouragement 
and some fear of my audience, in fact in totally 
the wrong frame of mind I was driven in the 
Robinson's car, and escorted by the father and son 
to the Carnegie Institute at eight o'clock. 

The charming Professor of History, James, of 
Pittsburgh University, introduced me to a half 
empty, cold and unresponsive hall! 

I prefaced my lecture by asking my audience to 
allow me, for my own satisfaction, to express a few 
words of appreciation of Pittsburgh before I began 
my narrative of Moscow. I said : 

"I have only been in this country two weeks, but 
I have had a wonderful time. As for Pittsburgh, 

39 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I have only been here three days, but I have been 
so hospitably received that I have crammed a great 
deal into that space. 

"I have seen things in Pittsburgh that the usual 
Pittsburgher takes for granted and does not see 
the beauty of. I have seen a town by day and by 
night that looked like a Whistler picture. I have 
heard in the night sounds like the sea breaking 
on the shore, and this was the sound of never ceas- 
ing machinery. I have seen the furnaces and the 
red hot steel ; I have seen machines with hands and 
fingers that seemed to have the reasoning power of 
humans. 

"I worship force as an element, force and energy 
in humans, force and power in machinery. You 
will think me emotional and stupid if I tell you 
that I came away from the deafening sound of the 
steel mill, with the same feeling I have after list- 
ening to Cathedral music. Have you ever, when you 
have seen something very beautiful, felt that it was 
almost too beautiful to take in? There are mo- 
ments of happiness too, when one feels not big 
enough to contain them. 

"The Pittsburgh mills are like Bolshevism, 
something so tremendous that my mind cannot 
grasp it. And this leads me back to my subject: 
after all, you have come here not to hear my im- 
pressions of Pittsburgh, but to form your own 
impressions of Moscow. . . ." 
40 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I then proceeded to tell a cold small audience, 
in halting tones, forgetting much by the way — the 
story of my trip to Moscow. And because it was 
like talking to a reserved unresponsive person, I 
felt paralyzed — I wanted to stop, I stumbled over 
my sentences and had lapses of memory I There 
was no life in my lecture. Moreover, I was tired, 
and my head was full of the sound of blast fur- 
naces. ... It was an awful ordeal and I was glad 
when it was over. 

With Ruth Djirloff, I caught the train, Mr. 
Robinson seeing us ofif at the station. He has been 
so kind. 

The train was awful. At last I have something 
to complain of! How the luxurious, pampered 
American can stand his night travelling car is a 
wonderment to me. Here at last is something they 
might copy from Europe. In England, France, 
and Italy, it is far more comfortable. My night is 
indescribable. The bed behind a curtain is all one 
gets, not a square foot of privacy to stand up and 
undress in. I had to struggle out of my clothes 
as I sat or lay on my bed. Then, whenever anyone 
passed down the car (and they did pass), they 
brushed my curtains which parted enough (in spite 
of being buttoned), to let in a streak of electric 
light that waked me. Moreover, people passed 
down the car whistling, and at an early hour in 
the morning, when the stars were still in the 

41 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

heavens, passengers who were about to alight at the 
next stop got together and talked loudly, . . . not a 
wink of sleep could I get while two men discussed 
business matters. Weary as I was, sleep could not 
combat the conditions. 

Friday, FebPxUARY i8, 1921. New York. 

A weary wreck, I arrived at midday at New 
York, and to my surprise and joy, Hugo Koehler 
had brought Dick to meet me at the station. I 
then went up to the Numesmatic Society, where I 
found my exhibition all arranged, and ready to 
open at two o'clock. Some press people were al- 
ready there. 

Very little re-arranging had to be done. The 
''Numesmatic" staff must have worked like super- 
men. Mr. Bertelli, the bronze founder, had re- 
touched the pattincs and done wonders. I was 
delighted. 

It is very thrilling to see one's own exhibition — 

Saturday, February 19, 1921. 

Hugo and I went to lunch with Mrs. Harry 
Payne Whitney at her studio. I sat next to Mr. 
Bob Chanler, whom I hadn't met before. He has 
the head of a great French savant, and a voice like 
the roar of a bull. He was once married to Cava- 
lieri! On my other side, Mr. Childe Hassam, the 

painter; opposite Mr. and Jo Davidson. 

42 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

There were lots of people I didn't know, and 
among them I met a Sheridan cousin called Pitt- 
man. Good looking and nice, I was glad to claim 
him. Paul Manship came in afterwards, he and I 
and Davidson and Bob Chanler, unable to bear the 
noise or the absence of air, at the end of lunch 
went upstairs to the studio and danced to the gram- 
aphone. Mr. Chanler, rather mad, and attractive 
accordingly, kissed me in a moment of expansion! 
That is very American. They may kiss in public, 
1 i J I -il \''^'i'^h\ 

After lunch Ruth Draper did some imitations. 
It is pure genius. 

It was difficult to drag oneself away from such 
an attractive party. I like Mrs. Whitney and her 
breakaway from the conventions. She seems to 
achieve the real Bohemian spirit. I remember 
John Noble telling me about her years ago — she 
is the fairy godmother of struggling artists. 

Jo Davidson and Paul Manship came down to 
my exhibition in Hugo's car. It was nice of them 
to come, sculptors are not as nice to each other in 
England as those here have been to me. There 
seems to be a different spirit here. I had a hectic 
time, wanting to talk to all my friends who turned 
up. 

I came home In time to dress and Jo Davidson 
called for me and took me to the Manhattan Opera 
House. We had not time to dine. It was the first 

43 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

time I had been to the opera since Moscow. The 
house was a full one and very enthusiastic. The 
stalls seemed to consist mostly of alien music- 
lovers, and for the most part not evening dressed. 
It was very democratic and harmonious. I liked 
it. 

Afterwards, Hugo fetched us and we went to 
Guardiabasse's flat for supper. He made the mac- 
aroni himself and I helped him. He sings and he 
paints, and he seems to be a useful person to have 
about the house! 

We were a noisy crew, and there were repeated 
requests from below that we should make less 
noise! Which seemed to me curious for a studio 
flat. An American party is always noisy. I can't 
make out why one should be unable to hear oneself 
speak. I think it is that they talk in a key higher 
than we do. They have a great sense of cama- 
raderie, and when they get together to have a 
"good time" it is bewildering. I wonder what 
they think of us? I should think they find us 
deadly. 

Sunday, February 20, 1921. New York. 

It suddenly started to snow last night and this 
morning it was inches deep. Dick was delighted. 
Hugo Koehler took us to lunch at the St. Regis 
opposite, and on our way back Dick stopped to dig 
with an old woman who was shovelling away the 

44 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

snow from in front of her house. I watched them 
for a few minutes, and the old woman said to Dick, 
"My! You'll be a help to your Daddy some day." 
Dick, in a perfectly matter of fact voice said, "I 
haven't got a daddy, he's killed." "O-h — ," said 
the woman, "in that terrible war I suppose?" 
"Yes," Dick answered, "in that war — and we 
haven't won anything by it either. . . .". It 
sounded uncanny in the mouth of a five-year-old. 
Finally I left him there shovelling and his face 
was gloriously pink. Louise could survey him 
from the window, and Hugo and I got down to the 
"Numesmatic" on the subway. It was the first 
time I had travelled on it, and I w^as amused to 
see that the "Do not Spit," order was written in 
three languages. One of course being Italian, and 
the other Yiddish! 

To-night I have had my first evening at home. 
I resolutely refused to go to the supper party I had 
accepted at Mrs. W.'s. Hugo wanted me to go, 
but I would not. I made him keep his dinner 
engagement and I dined with Louise. We each 
had an egg and a cup of coffee. It was heaven, 
and I went to bed early. 

Monday, February 21, 1921. 

Griffin Barry fetched me and took me to lunch 
in Washington Place at a strange below-ground 
place where we had excellent Italian food. There 

45 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

was Mary Heaton Vorse, author of "Men and 
Steel," and Kenneth Durant. 

I discussed ''Men and Steel" and Pittsburgh 
with Mary Heaton Vorse, she had seen the beauty 
and the grandeur of the mills as I had. I said that 
I thought the basis of the labor trouble here was 
that Labor is alien and can be not only exploited, 
but any attempt of alien Labor to rebel is not tol- 
erated. When I asked in Pittsburgh whether 
Labor had gained anything by its Steel Strike in 
1919, I was told emphatically "No" — to which I 
replied that the English working man gains some- 
thing every time he strikes ! The argument I was 
given was this : "They haven't got to work in the 

mills if they don't want to ." "No," I said, 

"But can you do without them?" "No ." 

Mary Vorse says, however, that I am wrong 
about its being alien Labor that is exploited. She 
says that the American farmer in the west is not 
treated any better. 

They all admitted, however, that no such pov- 
erty or bad living conditions existed in Pittsburgh, 
for example, as in London, Hull, New Castle, etc. 
The English slums are probably the most tragic in 
the world. 

After lunch I went with Barry and Durant to 
his office. The feeling was at once Moscow! I 
know so well the type of clerk in those offices. I 
met all the stafif, and saw some proofs which are 

46 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

publications in the next number of the Magazine, 
Soviet Russia. 

It is interesting that an old Philadelphia family 
belonging to Rittenhouse Square should produce 
Kenneth: an ascetic Bolshevik with an archaic 
face. A face that belongs to the woods, and a soul 
that belongs to the world's workers. It is not al- 
ways working people and worker's conditions that 
produce revolutionaries and world reformers. 
Reaction produces them. The intellectual free- 
thinker and free-observer is driven out of his own 
sphere in spite of himself — human sympathy, a 
sense of justice, added to a revulsion against the 
narrow prejudice, the intense dullness of a social 
bourgeois class. 

A society that's purely social and not intellec- 
tual is dull all the world over. In some countries 
its monotony is varied by its vice. In this country 
it is less vicious (apparently) and more dull, less 
intellectual, and more overwhelmingly conven- 
tional. No one with imagination or spirit could 
help reacting from it. Kenneth and I are reaction- 
aries! 

From a purposeless and equally conventional 
world, I went unexpectedly to Russia. There I 
opened my eyes wide to a new, struggling, striving 
humanity. Whatever I understood of it — and I 
admit I did not understand much — it was obvious 
that this new world was pursuing an IDEA. Right 

47 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

or wrong they were living selflessly, and were pre- 
pared for every sacrifice. I never had known 
people before who would sacrifice something for 
an ideal. I might have met them, without going 
to Russia, but they didn't exist in the circle by 
which I was hemmed in. In Russia I became con- 
scious that a great mass of oppressed people had 
risen to struggle for light. I was impressed. I 
was appreciative, and after awhile I was inspired. 
It was afterwards, when I came out of Russia that 
my own world roused in me a reaction of rebel- 
lion. The intense stupidity as well as the narrow- 
mindedness of my own class did their work on me. 

As for America! Since I landed I have been 
metaphorically slapped and kissed alternately, un- 
til I'm so bewildered I have almost lost judgment. 
Yet I claim nothing for myself but the right, as a 
citizen of the world to be free, to think as I like, 
and to speak as I think. I have the right that the 
man in the street has, to an opinion. Like the man 
in the street, there is no reason why my opinion 
should carry more weight or be treated with more 
consideration. But I claim the right to be as sin- 
cere as that man. 

Kenneth Durant, having finished the work he 
went to his ofHce to do, took me to tea with the 
Pinchots. Mr. Pinchot is a brother of Nettie 
Johnstone,* and is supposed to be rather radical. 

*Wife of Sir Alan Johnstone, British diplomatic service. 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I should have said "poseur," not radical. These 
people who have so much to lose (he is reported 
rich) are not very seriously radical. There were 
some reactionary women there and some undefin- 
able men, so we all three sat rather silent until at 
last in walked a large breezy person I It was 
Charles Irvine, Editor of the Socialist paper, The 
Call. He came and sat next to me, and was a 
great relief. 

We talked a little of England and mutual 
friends. I told him my difficulties about lecturing 
to capitalistic United States on a subject as dis- 
tasteful to them as Lenin and Trotzky! I told him 
about my empty hall at Pittsburgh. He exclaimed 
that had he known me before I went to Pittsburgh 
he would have filled my hall for me. If one kind 
of people doesn't want to hear you, get those that 
will. . . . He promises I shall never have an empty 
hall again. On the way home in the bus were two 
girls. One was dicussing with the other her wed- 
ding dress; they were diverted from their frivol- 
ous talk by headlines in an evening paper of the 
person in front, "Soviet troops massing on the 
Georgian frontier." And one said, "I wonder what 
Soviet troops means — I know what Bolsheviki 
means, but Soviet, what is that? I wish I could 
get some one to explain." The other said, "I don't 
know what Soviet means, but the Bolsheviks were 
named after a general called Bolsheviki." "Yes, of 

49 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

course," said the other, "That was it. General Bol- 
sheviki" . . . and they dismissed it and resumed 
their wedding dress talk. I suppose that is pretty 
illustrative of general information concerning the 
Russian subject. . . . 

Tuesday, February 22, 1921. 

A long letter from the Crown Prince of Sweden, 
the first I have received since I got back from 
Russia. The first four pages are full of reproach 
for having published the fact that I saw him when 
I passed through Stockholm with Kameneff. He 
says that it is embarrassing for him to be mentioned 
even indirectly in connection with ''those people" 
with whom I was travelling. 

This means, I suppose, that his relations have 
abused him soundly for even knowing me! He is 
wrong to think I could do him any harm; on the 
contrary, his broad-mindedness could only win 
over radicals, and not harm him with conservatives. 

I expect the "early Christians" * were terribly 
scandalized, and have been writing and telling him 
what they thought of it. 

After lunching with Emil Fuchs, who is doing a 
wonderful head of Mr. Cartier, the jeweler, look- 
ing like Rameses ... I took Dick up to the 
Numismatic museum with his sledge, and he to- 



*Prince and Princess Christian of England. 
50 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

boganned outside. Two hundred people came to 
my exhibition to-day. It is very amusing, all kinds 
of cranks introduce themselves to me . . . some to 
say they are Bolsheviks, or Communists, and they 
hand me literature which gives me news of Mos- 
cow! Others who tell me how they hate the Bol- 
sheviks, or the Sinn Feiners, or the Knights of 
Columbus, and so on. 

I am always amused by people who want to kill 
off all Bolsheviks, all Sinn Feiners, all Germans 
and all Jews. ... It would make for a wonderfully 
emptier world. Perhaps it would be more peace- 
ful ! Anyway, it is very emblematic of the Chris- 
tian spirit of to-day! 

Rather an amusing record has been kept for me 
of some of the remarks, made by people who come, 
concerning the Russian busts: 

"How ugly." 

"How wicked they look." 

"What noble looking men." 

"Lenin is my hero, I love him." 

"Zinoviev looks like a musician." 

"This is Russian propaganda " 

"This is the most perfect anti-Bolshevik prop- 
aganda, " 

"These are fine advertisements for the Bolshe- 
viks — I'm one." 

"Lenin is not for sale, she made him to decorate 
her London studio." 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

"I believe they look worse than she made them." 

"How did she ever escape alive from such awful 
looking men?" 

"We have seen some of the men. These busts 
look just like them." 

"That's fine of Trotzky!" 

"They don't look like bomb-throwers." 

"Lenin has a benevolent expression " 

"Trotzky looks like the devil." 

"Lenin is positively awful to look at." 

"Who is Mrs. Sheridan? The name seems 
familiar." 

"Is she a Russian?" 

"Is she Jewess?" 

"She is a wonder " 

"How tall is she?" 

"Is she pretty?" 

"She is a Bolshevik." 

"Is she a Bolshevik?" 

"I bet she hates the Russians, she made them so 
ugly." 

"Did she study with Rodin?" 

"Is she light or dark?" 

'TAfl/can'tbeHERI" 

"Is she from Chicago?" 

"I'm glad she's English." 

"I'm proud she has American blood in her 
veins." 
52 



I 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

"So glad a woman, and not a man, did this won- 
derful work." 

"That's Winston Churchill What a contrast 

to the Russians." 

"That is what I call a good face." 

"He is the author of 'Inside the Cup.' " 

"Lady Randolph Churchill is his wife." 

"Shane Leslie is Irish." 

"He is the great English actor." 

"He is the man who was stood up and shot." 

"He looks sad because he is thinking of poor 
Ireland." 

"Who is Mademoiselle X?" 

"Is she a nun?" 

"Is her face china?" 

"Is her face wax?" 

"How did she get the face inside the bronze?" 

"It is beautiful." 

"It is horrid." 

"She was a Russian spy." 

"She was a French war nurse." 

"I have read the book about her." 

"There was a play about her, I saw it." 

"She is Mrs. Sheridan's sister." 

" 'John' is Mrs. Sheridan's baby. She sat up 
and modelled it in bed." 

"He is Shane Leslies' baby." 

"It is a Russian baby." 

"That is Asquith. It was through his influence 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

that Mrs. Sheridan got in and out of Russia with 
safety." 

"Where is the Exhibition?" (Question asked 
by a lady after looking at the things for half an 
hour.) 

"I suppose she sold the mask for less because it 
was broken — I mean that its head is not all there." 

"They all have souls — that are almost living." 

"This Hall looks like a funeral parlor." 

"If I had the money I would buy them all, so 
they could not be taken out of America." 

"I do work just like that." 

"It's simply wonderful." 

"A High-school girl can do it." 

Wednesday, February 23, 1921. 

I lunched with Travers Jerome, Senior, it was 
the first time I had met him. He talks well and 
every now and then he says things so like Winston, 
and in the sort of way Winston says them, that I 
realize the strength of the Jerome blood in us. 

He told me a little about my family; there is, he 
says, a red-haired, freckled strain that is very 
strong, and a black-haired strain that was more 

delicate . Winston is, of course, the red-haired 

strain, and it has come out with great force in his 
children. Hugh's* child, too, has the red hair and 



*Hugh Frewen, brother of C. S. 

54 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

freckles. Travers, referring to Shane Leslie, said 
he did not recognize the Jerome in him. "We 
were never dreamers ," he said, "always prac- 
tical and forceful." He told me rather a sweet 
story about Henry James, whom he apparently 
took down to the East Side to show him around. 
To meet him, he invited Meyer Shonfield, a Jew- 
ish sweatshop operator. He thought Meyer was 
the most opposite pole to Henry, and that it would 
be interesting. To Meyer, he said, "Study this 
man Henry James, he is a de-nationalized Amer- 
ican, and I want your opinion of him." Henry, 
he says, was at his best that night; he, so to speak, 
threw off his veil, and was, what so seldom hap- 
pened, the simple unmasked Henry. Afterwards, 
when they had parted, Meyer turned to Travers, 
and with a glow of enthusiasm, said, "He's a real 

man! ain't he ?" Surely as high a tribute as 

our beloved Henry ever received. 

Meanwhile I feel I am just beginning to get my 
bearings and to understand the psychology of New 
York! 

I am worn out going from one place to another 
that I am asked to, and the odd spare moments 
are spent in writing little social notes of refusal, 
or answering the telephone. It seems a terrible 
waste of time. America has a genius for enter- 
taining, but I came here for work, not for food. 
At parties there are so many people, and they all 

55 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

talk so loud that one cannot hear one's neighbor 
speak. One comes out as one went in, a stranger, 
knowing no names, and remembering few faces, 
and having eaten too richly. 

Everyone looks rather alike, the women have a 
curious expression of amiability that makes it al- 
most impossible for the submerged stranger to re- 
member any one as anything special. The face of 
the average American woman has a curious seren- 
ity, the mother of a son of i8 may look as if she 
were the mother of a son of 8 — I suppose they live 
more sheltered lives, and do not show the marks 
of battle as other women do. I must say the Amer- 
ican man is extremely good to them. 

Any man in the world can be chivalrous towards 
the woman he is in love with, but the American 
man is chivalrous to the woman he isn't in love 
with; and the woman takes it for granted I 

At seven o'clock I dined at my first public din- 
ner. It was the Society of the Genesee at the 
Commodore Hotel, and I was the guest of Mr. 
Louis Wiley. I had Judge Parker on one side of 
m^ McEvov was at our table and Emil Fuchs, 
and Guardiabasse, otherwise no one I knew. It 
W3«5 a huge affair. 

I'o my amazement they began with a long grace I 
The Puritanism that still survives in these people 
is remarkable. 

All during dinner there were speeches. Admiral 
S6 



Mt AMERICAN DIAKt 

Huse discussed armament, which he is in favor of. 
Of course, soldiers and sailors are for armaments, 
otherwise where would they be? But armaments 
don't interest me much. I can't see that it matters 
if the United States wants to waste money in that 
way. She's got plenty to spend. But what is the 
armament for? The United States got on without 
it before, when there was a strong England and a 
strong Germany. Now that Europe is "in extremis" 
why suddenly is the United States on the defen- 
sive? Anyway, none of the speeches were anti- 
British to my surprise, as I am looking for that 
anti-British wave, and haven't found it yet. 

One speaker surprised me by telling a long sub- 
marine war story. We have so completely finished 
with war stories in Europe, it was funny to find it 
still going on here. 

After dinner my neighbor on the left insisted on 
taking me to dance at a restaurant called "Mont- 
martre." He assured me it was quite respectable 
and that I should "have the time of my life." I 
didn't care about the respectability, but it wasn't 
amusing. A room thick with smoke and filled with 
supper tables, and only the space of a plate to dance 
in! A terrible crowd, and dancing a perfect im- 
possibility. 

Friday, February 25, 1921. 

Dick took me out to lunch. He insisted I should 

S7 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

go alone with him. He knew exactly where to take 
me. We crossed Fifth Avenue and went along 
West 55th Street and down some steps to a restau- 
rant called the "Mayflower," where he seemed to 
be known there. Dick ordered the food, talked 
familiarly to the waitress and produced two dol- 
lars to pay the bill. He then took me to a toy shop 
in Fifth Avenue ; he knew the way there, too, and 
I had to pay five dollars for a submarine ! 

I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Barmby, who took 
me to Carnegie Hall to hear Sir Philip Gibbs' lec- 
ture on the Irish question. It was a subject that 
seemed to demand great courage to tackle, and, of 
course, it asked for trouble. Outside on the side 
walk, women went back and forth with placards 
full of insults about England. It roused all my 
fighting instincts. I said to one of them aggres- 
sively, "I'm proud I'm English!" and she put her 
tongue out at me. Why was I proud to be English? 
I never feel very English ordinarily, but these 
people afifected me this way. 

The hall was packed. Gibbs prefaced his lec- 
ture by hoping it was going to be a pleasant and a 
friendy meeting, which made the audience laugh. 
It certainly remained friendly longer than I had 
expected, but when the interruptions came they 
were ridiculously feeble and ill-organized. A 
bunch of women in the dress circle, screamed in 
high-pitched voices and waved the United States 

58 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

and the Sinn Fein flags. One man in the gallery 
had to be evicted, amid applause of the house. 

Sir Philip never v^as flustered, never did I see 
anyone so calm and so self-possessed. Finally he 
told them they were very silly people, and not 
patriots. He said they were not Irish, but he be- 
lieved they were Bolsheviks! (Applause from the 
house.) When the gallery got too noisy and he 
had to stop, there was a dramatic moment when a 
tall, good looking priest suddenly appeared upon 
the platform, shook hands with Gibbs and then 
waited for a lull. He then announced himself as 
^'Father Duffy" (wild applause). Of course I, in 
my ignorance knew nothing of Father Duffy, and 
learnt later he was chaplain of the 69th Regiment, 
and went with them to France and distinguished 
himself on the field of battle. He said that he was 
a Sinn-Feiner, but that he asked fair play for Sir 
Philip Gibbs, whom he thought was a fair man, 
and he wanted to hear what he had to say. Some 
other time, he said, "we will fill a hall for our- 
selves and discuss our own subject, but to-day let 
us hear what Sir Philip has to say." 

He did much towards restoring order. I liked 
his personality, he had courage and dignity. Sir 
Philip certainly did speak fair, he was fair to both 
sides. He did the almost impossible: he was sym- 
pathetic about Ireland, yet loyal to England. 
Moreover, he remained calm, patient, and un- 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ruffled throughout the interruptions. In the end 
he advocated Dominion Home Rule for Ireland, 
which enraged the agitators. He said they never 
would be a Republic, and the house applauded en- 
thusiastically, and on every occasion displayed 
strong pro-British sympathy. I was amazed. 
Again I was looking for this anti-British wave I 
hear so much about. Outside, afterwards, the Irish 
agitators did everything in their power to start a 
riot. The police were very good-humored and 
very competent. It must be pleasanter at this mo- 
ment to be an Irish policeman in New York than 
in Ireland! 

Tuesday, March i, 192 i. 

Mr. Liveright took me to lunch at the Dutch 
Treat Club. I knew nothing about it, nor by 
whom I was invited — and when we got up to the 
room in the elevator (we were late), it appeared 
that I was the only woman, among what seemed to 
me about seventy men. Had it been seventy women 
instead of men, I should have gone down in the 
elevator by which I came up. But I can stand this 
sort of party every day in the week! They were 
all very polite and the whole room rose to its feet 
as I came in. 

I sat next to the president. Mr. Pollen was on 
his other side. I had on my left Mr. Cosgrave, 
the Sunday Editor of The WORLD. The party, 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

which sat at small tables, were editors, writers, 
cartoonists, etc. I was called upon to make a 
speech which was unexpected, paralysing and un- 
fair. I spoke for about fifteen minutes. I don't 
know what I said, the thing was to say something, 

anything . They were wonderfully nice and 

sympathetic . 

Mr. Pollen spoke after me. He was amiable 
about America, and all went off well! 

Mr. Liveright told me afterwards that he ad- 
mired my self-composure. Thank heavens if I can 
appear so, and not betray the interior terror that 
possesses me at the thought of public speaking I 

Friday, March 4, 1921. {Harding's Inaugura- 
tion.) 
Mr. Galatly and Childe Hassam fetched me and 
motored me out to George Gray Barnard's studio. 
It is situated high up above the Hudson River. I 
was keen to meet him because Epstein had talked 
to me so much and so enthusiastically about him. 
As Epstein never has a good word for a fellow 
sculptor his eulogy of Barnard made a great impres- 
sion on me. It was Epstein who showed me photo- 
graphs of the Barnard Lincoln and the St. Gaudens 
Lincoln at the time of the great controversy. I 
had not a moment's hesitation in my own mind as 
to which was the finer work of art. But some one 
decided on the St. Gaudens for Westminster. A 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

people who could accept Sir George Frampton's 
memorial to Nurse Cavell could hardly be expect- 
ed to select the greater of the two Lincolns! 

The morning was bright, cold, and sunny. We 
knocked at the door of a big building by the road- 
side, and Barnard himself came to the door. Mid- 
dle-aged, clean-shaven, with a mass of upstanding, 
gray hair, he blinked at us in the sunlight (he has 
a slight cast in one eye), and asked if I would like 
to see the cloister before I saw the studio. It was 
too cold, he said, for him to come with us, but we 
would find someone there to show us over. As we 
walked up the road towards a pile of masonry with 
some ruins and some columns outside it, I asked 
about the cloister. It was explained to me that this 
was built of stones and fragments from France, 
Italy and Spain, which Barnard had collected. 
He had designed the cloister, and built some of it 
with his own hands. It represented, so they said, 
the soul of Barnard, and there some day he would 
be buried. 

In this case It seemed quite sensible that I should 
see the cloister first and the builder afterwards, if 
the one explained the other. 

We went to a door and rang an old bell, even 
outside in the porch there was a smell of incense. 
An old man opened for us. He wore a black, worn 
robe, a rope around his waist, and a skull cap. He 
looked like a monk, and his face was tanned and 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

wrinkled, but when he spoke, it was American! 
Inside, the building was of old pink brick, with 
cloisters all around, of beautifully matched pairs 
of columns of different patterns. In the center was 
the stone tomb of a Crusader. Small carved frag- 
ments were let into the walls here and there. There 
were side chapels, and altars and Madonnas and 
Bambinos, and candle sticks and golden gates, and 
everything that there ought to be. One really felt 
oneself in some remote corner of Italy. Moreover, 
it was simple and beautiful, in perfect taste, and 
built, so one felt, by loving hands. 

I asked if it was meant to be Roman Catholic, 
but I was told ''no." ... It savored of Catholicism, 
it looked, smelt and felt Roman. There was not 
a corner, not a viewpoint that was not a poem. And 
so this (I kept saying to myself) is the soul of 
Barnard. I felt myself projected forward many 
years. ... I saw it as the burial place, the memorial 
of Barnard. I felt that a proud and a grateful 
people would come there some day piously and 
wonderingly: in the heart of America, Barnard's 
body would be in Italy. 

I stood at the feet of the nameless Crusader, and 
wondered about the soul of the man Barnard. It 
was evident that he was a dreamer and not a com- 
mercial artist. It was evident that his soul was 
athirst for certain things that his mother country 
lacked; for repose, mellowness of age, and tradi- 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

tion. Why did he not go and live and work where 
these things are? And I remembered that I, my- 
self, love these things that Barnard seemed to love. 
I too love Italy, but I know, and Barnard knows, 
that Italy is a dreamland where everything is in 
the past and nothing is in the future, a land in 
which there is no incentive to work. And Barnard, 
doubtless, has energy. The man who can build a 
monument like this must have great energy. A 
worker does not go from here to Italy, the worker 
works here, where there is work to do, and so Bar- 
nard planted himself on a still hillside within view, 
but out of sound, of New York, and he collected 
stones, old worn stones from Italy and France and 
Spain, stones that had built tradition, and he built 
a little bit of old world at his gate, where his soul 
might some day be at rest. 

It seemed to me a great whole explanation — and 
to contain such pathos that I could not speak my 
thoughts. 

Then, of a sudden, from somewhere in a loft, the 
sound of voices singing. I looked around but saw 
no choir. Our presbyterian monk had disappeared. 
It was a charming sound although it was grama- 
phone, and I smiled to myself, at the jingling 
mixup of old world and new! 

Before we left, the American monk told us to 
stand at the door and have one last look, first from 
the left archway and then from the right, to see it 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

from every angle. I gave a good look round and 
then inadvertantly my eyes alighted on the black 
robed figure. He was standing in exactly the right 
place, in a set attitude, motionless, well trained. 
All part of the picture : "Hullo America !" 

We had lingered so long, that there was not half 
enough time left for the studio. Barnard showed 
us his colossal head of Lincoln, which he proposes 
to carve out of the rock of a hillside. A magnifi- 
cent idea. We spent nearly all the rest of the time 
looking at his model and listening to his explana- 
tion of a great war memorial. Here, on this piece 
of land he dreams of building an American Acro- 
polis. He showed us the plans of the circular walls 
that would be decorated with bronze reliefs, and 
the statues that would represent each nation and be 
contributed by the artist which each nation would 
select to represent them. "No war scenes," he said 
emphatically — by which I gathered he was a great 
pacifist. "We have had enough of war scenes, here 
in bold relief would be the men and the occupa- 
tions they left, and the families and the homes they 
went away from. In the background, in low relief, 
would be illustrated the idea and ideals for which 
they fought " 

He talked with his head towards us, but his eyes 
closed. Introspectively, and with hand gestures, he 
helped to explain and describe. His hands are 
strong and his fingers so short and thick that I had 

65 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the impression that they had all been cut off at the 
second phalange. 

His scheme was a gigantic one, here among other 
things was the garden of the mothers. Seven moth- 
ers stood sentinel against a terrace wall. They 
were half carved figures, showing their breasts 
from which the milk had flowed that had fed the 
man-babes. From the waist down they became one 
with the graves of their sons. The centre mother 
was to represent the Mother of all the ages. She 
was to hold in one hand her breast, and the other 
arm out-stretched as if it nursed the vanished babe. 
Her abdomen was to be seared and scarred with 
the furrows of child bearing. He was insistent and 
persistent about this. The idea of the mother 
seemed to appeal to him very forcibly He al- 
most awed us by his description of the warrior's 
mother. He had dreamt of her, he said. He had 
seen her in visions in the night. He showed us the 
small sketch of his vision, and of her warrior son 
lying stretched out at her feet. Even in this small 
wax sketch he had put his force, his conviction, his 

deep feeling It was almost frightening in its 

severity. 

He told us, too, of the tree of peace, all bronze 
and enamel, with golden fruits, and this was to be 
transparent and illuminated. All night, every 
night, always, it was to be lit up like a lighthouse 
beacon, so that all who saw it by land or by sea 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

would know that the light that shined was from the 
tree of peace. 

Even if he never carried out this part of the 
memorial, he had an archway which in itself was 
sufficient and magnificient. The archway was 
formed by a rainbow, of mosaics, and up to the 
feet of the rainbow on one side came naked batta- 
lions of youths that had laid down their lives, and 
on the other side, reaching up as it were to the 
rainbow of hope, came the refugees, men, women 
and children. 

There was much more that I cannot relate. 
Barnard told it to us for an hour or more, and we 
stood and listened and watched, silently enthralled. 
Every now and then Childe Hassam, putting aside 
his own artist's soul, would draw out his watch and 
look at the time threateningly and suggestively. I 
pushed his watch aside and whispered to him that 
time for this once did not exist, nor appointments, 

nor meals Could one interrupt a man's vision 

by observing the time? 

Lastly, he unveiled for us the marble head of 
Lincoln. It stood on a pedestal facing a window of 
which the blind was drawn. As we stood before it, 
the master slowly, very slowly, released the light, 
and as he did so the shadow from beneath Lincoln's 
brow was dispelled, and his eyes seemed to have 
life, and to look up with all the pity and the tender- 
ness and the human sympathy of a superman. It 

67 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

was not Lincoln the man of sorrows, it was not 
Lincoln the thinker, it was Lincoln the great un- 
derstanding idealist, and there was so much of 
love and sadness in the marble face that I, a nor- 
mal woman, had tears streaming down my face, 
and I was ashamed. 

Mr. Galatly has brought this Lincoln head to 
present to the Luxembourg Gallery. 

As for the soul of Barnard, and the vision, and 
the imagination, and the energy, and the selfless- 
ness of him — it is immense. 

Sunday, March 6, 192 1. 

I lunched with Griffen Barry and Kenneth Du- 
rant at the Brevoort. Jo Davidson came in with 
a party; he came and talked to us. Whenever I 
am with Kenneth I meet Jo Davidson! He at- 
tacked me about it — he said I was always with Bol- 
sheviks! He knows I like them, and I know he 
likes them too ! It is a great joke. 

After lunch I went up to the Numesmatic So- 
ciety; as it was a beautiful afternoon, five hundred 
people appeared! 

I'd like a picture of rather stout middle-aged 
ladies, in high ostrich plumed hats, scrutinizing 
closely and carefully through lorgnettes the un- 
flinching bronzes of the Soviet leaders. 

One man came who looked exactly like Trotzky, 
though with a shaven chin, but he had the same 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

profile, the keen eye, the clear skin, and the stand- 
up hair. I introduced myself to him and said, "Do 
you know who you look like?" He smiled, "Yes, 
I have seen myself in the glass — I know." He told 
me he was Russian, and I saw he was a Jew. He 
said he hoped to go back to his country some day 
and help. The man was a dormant Trotzky, the 
sort of man who if roused, or in similar conditions, 
might evolve into anything. 

I dined with the Ralph Pulitzers, — they have 
some nice things, including one or two good 
Rodins. He was a real appreciator of good things. 
Laurette Taylor and her husband were there, and 
the Swopes. Laurette Taylor has great charm, 
talks well, and seems to have more vision and to be 
less self-centred than the usual people of the stage 
— and I like her husky voice. 

I sat next to Frank P. Adams, whose modern 
"Pepys' Diary" I have read from time to time. 
Goodness knows if he meant to be interesting or 
was really indififerent. He told me he had been 
invited to meet me half a dozen times, but had re- 
fused. Exactly why he had refused, I was unable 
to make out. But short of saying, "You are the 
divinest woman I've ever met, and I've been fol- 
lowing you three-quarters of the way round the 
world to make your acquaintance," he could 
hardly have said anything more arresting to a 
woman's attention. ■ 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Tuesday, March 8, 1921. 

I lunched with Mrs. Lorrilard Spencer, and met 
there an extremely interesting woman. She had a 
hawk's eye, but a kindly smile. It was the face of 
a "femme savante." She was Mrs. Eliot, and I 
never found out till later that she was a daughter 
of Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle 
Hymn of the Republic. 

Walking down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon, a 
woman caught me up and asked if I was Mrs. 
Sheridan. She said she was the Communist woman 
who came up and spoke to me after my lecture at 
the Aeolian Hall. I remembered her emotional 
Russian face. Her name, she said, was Rose Pastor 
Stokes. She had liked my sincerity and impartial- 
ity about the Soviet leaders. She apologized for 
not being able to ask me to a meal in her house 
(why should she apologize or ask me) ? Her ex- 
planation was that she had married a millionaire, 
and he had "reverted to type" with the result that 
their meals were rather silent! I asked her to come 
and see me, but she said that she was under police 
surveillance and she did not wish to compromise 
me. 

We walked some way together. 

Thursday, March 10, 1921. 

Kenneth Durant arrived to take me out to din- 
ner, and with him came Mr. Humphries, whom 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I'd last seen in Moscow where he was working in 
Tchicherin's office. He left two days before I did, 
but went over the Trans-Siberian to China and 
thence to Honolulu where his wife lives. We meet 
in New York, having between us encircled the 
world! 

I asked him laughingly, what he thought of my 
having become an authority on Russia! He said 
that he had to take it rather seriously when he read 
extracts from my Moscow diary in the Chinese 
papers ! 

After dinner we went to Crystal Eastman's. She 
edits the LIBERATOR and her husband, whose name 
is Fuller, is on the FREEMAN. I liked them. I 
liked her particularly. She is goood looking, and 
extremely decorative. She sails into a room with 
her head high and the face of a triumphant Vic- 
tory. The atmosphere was such as I recall in Mos- 
cow — hospitality that was simple and friendly, and 
discussions that were interesting and humorous. I 
feel so proud that this sort of people are nice to 
me. It is easy enough to be received by what is 
vulgarly called the ''upper ten." They open their 
doors to breeding or money, but among these others 
one can only get in through accomplishment. 

Friday, March n, 1921. 

Mr. Pulitzer called for me at midday in his car 
and we went out to Barnard's studio. Mr. Pulitzer 

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had never been there. At first Mr. Barnard 
thought my companion was an Englishman and 
talked as perhaps he would not if he had known 
he was talking to the owner of The WORLD. 

Mr. Pulitzer is so calm, so restrained, and Mr. 
Barnard is so overflowing with enthusiasm! I led 
the way to the lovely cloister and Barnard joined 
us there and gave us an archealogical discourse, 
much to the edification of two American tourist 
ladies who pretended not to listen, but were 
secretly enthalled. 

The American verger was terribly in evidence, 
and at the end, when he poses and demands one 
should view him from two different points, he first 
of all firmly closed the door on Mr. Barnard who 
waited outside; but who went out, I thought, a 
little too readily. It is a terribly put-up job, and 
I'm afraid Barnard connives! It spoils everything 
and makes the beautiful cloister laughable. 

Mr. Pulitzer dropped me at the Pierpont Mor- 
gans for tea. Florrie Grenfell and her husband 
are staying there, and have been yachting with 
them in the Indies. 

Mrs. Morgan and her daughter and son were 
there, the mother looked like their sister. The 
atmosphere of restraint and politeness among 
themselves gave one the impression of being with 
Austrian Royalties. 

Florrie Grenfell took me over to the library. It 
72 




GEORGE GRAY BARxNARD DESCRIBING HiS CEulSTERS 
TO CLARE SHERIDAN 

(Photograph by Ralph Pulitzer, Esq.) 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

is a wonderful place, and inconceivable that it is a 
private possession. Everything is arranged and 
labelled as though it were a public museum. Even 
the bibelots have their labels, and the smallest 
thing on a shelf is a priceless work of art. There 
was a little bronze Benvenuto Cellini, a Michael 
Angelo baby head, a Botticelli on an easel — etc., 
etc. I asked if the place were open certain days a 
week to the public, but was told no. 

When we came out, I saw two men leaning 
against the lamp post. Florrie Grenfell said they 
were detectives. I asked her how she knew — she 
said she had been there long enough to know them 
by sight! Round the angle of the block, opposite 
the front door was another. I observed that this was 
rather fantastic; but the answer is that the police 
say they will not be responsible for Mr. Morgan's 
life, and he has already been shot at! It seems to me 
that if he metaphorically shook hands with the 
world, he'd be as safe as, for instance, our Prince 
of Wales. The world reacts to one's own attitude. 

Saturday, March 12, 1921. 

Kenneth and I dined together and then he took 
me among poets in Greenwich Village. Genevieve 
Taggard, whose apartment we met in, is a lovely 
and graceful being. An interesting Russian was 
there, Vladimir Simkhovitch. He took us to his 
apartment afterwards, and opening a cupboard, he 

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unrolled and hung up on the wall series of Chi- 
nese paintings. He is a great authority on Oriental 
Art. He loves his things. He produced from his 
treasure store those that suited his mood. Poems, 
in brown guache, or else portraits full of character 
and mystery. He values them far above Gains- 
boroughs ! Each one of the pictures was something 
that one longed to be alone with, and to think over, 
and absorb. As I was leaving, he presented me 
with a terra cotta Chinese "Tanagra" Ming period. 
... A truly Oriental impulse — we are going back 
again ! 

St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1921. 

I took Dick and Louise and little Walter Rosen 
and his governess to view the Sinn Fein proces- 
sion. All down P'ifth Avenue, even to where we 
were, opposite the Metropolitan Museum, the 
crowd was dense. I never realized so many Irish 
and such a Sinn Fein majority. After three hours 
of it I found a taxi opposite the Plaza Hotel and 
jumped in. We were blocked a long time, owing 
to traffic disorganization, and as the window be- 
tween us in front was open we talked. The taxi 
driver observed that if some of these Irish really 
wanted to help Ireland, why didn't they go back — ■ 
instead of carrying placards deploring the fact that 
they have but one life to lose for their country. 
Why not go back and lose it, or offer it? He said 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to me: "Some Irishmen were jeering at me the 
other day, and calling me a Russian Jew — I said 
to them that at least the Russian Jews had been 
consistent. Having been persecuted, they sud- 
denly one day got up and murdered their Czar — ■ 
I said to these Irishmen, instead of complaining 
so, why don't you go and kill George?" 

I was interested that he was Russian, and told 
him I had just come from Russia, where I had seen 
a good deal of Lenin and Trotzky — the taxi driver 
then asked me, "Are you the lady I've read 
of — ?" I said my name — he said he was proud 
to meet me. He then held forth about Lenin: "I 
regard him as the Abraham Lincoln of his 
country. . . ." 

Saturday, March 19, 1921. 

Mrs. Junius Morgan fetched me at eleven A.M. 
in her car and took me to the studio of Mr. G. B., 
the sculptor. He received us very ill, having as he 
said a "sick headache" and having caught a chill 
at a dinner party the previous evening he had 
vomited all night. He certainly looked like a bear 
with a sore head. He didn't know how to be civil 
to us. Mrs. Junius, sweet and smiling, treated him 
as though he were the most charming man in the 
world, and as though she took for granted that we 
were welcome. It was probably the best way. 

He too had done a Lincoln head, and it had been 

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reduced to miniature, so had Harding's. His as- 
sistants were at work piecing together the plaster 
sketch of a big memorial he is about to do, called 
"the wars of America." I could tell nothing from 
the fragmentary plastercast, but the photographs 
of the thing complete looked fine. 

He asked me who I'd studied with. I forgot to 
ask him. He abused Epstein and showed Mrs. 
Junius all the worst things in the Epstein book. 
Mrs. Junius, who is an amateur, and conventional, 
was not able to appreciate the best of Epstein. 
B. asked me fiercely if I had come to this country 
to live ; I don't know if I have or not, I told him, 
I thought not! 

As we were preparing to go, he pulled himself 
together. Either he wanted to atone or the vision 
of our departure put new life into him. He turned 
to me suddenly and said, "What do you think of 
Lenin?" 

He then held forth to us on the three men of con- 
temporary history. Kaiser Wilhelm, President 
Wilson, and Lenin. The former who had inherited 
his power, the second who had it offered to him, 
the third who took it. We agreed that the greatest 
of the three is the one who takes it. What had the 
other two done with their invested power? Let us 
see what Lenin is still to do. 

I dined with Mrs. Willard Straight, almost the 
nicest woman I've met since I arrived here. She 

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^ives one a feeling of sincerity and absence of pose. 
She is real. It was a delightful party, the Walter 
Lipmanns and Bullitts and B. Berenson, all people 
I like, were there. Her house has the right 
atmosphere. 

March 23, 1921. 

I spent the afternoon at Knoedlers, who have 
vtiy generously taken on my exhibition from the 
Numesmatic Society for two weeks. My things 
look well in their big room, and it is comic to see 
the Soviet leaders daring to show their faces in 
Fifth Avenue! No one looks at Winston or 
Asquith, they go straight to the Russians, as though 
fascinated with horror! 

Crystal Eastman and her husband took me to 
dinner at the Hill Club, where I had to speak. I 
sat between Mr. Boardman Robinson and Dr. 
Parker. Boardman Robinson is the author of the 
cartoon in the Liberator, "Capitalism Looks Itself 
Over," a horrible and terrible and wonderful con- 
ception. Mr. Robinson has red hair and beard. 
He looks like the pictures of Judas Iscariot or 
maybe it's St. Peter he reminds me of. In which 
case small chance of Heaven for the rich! He'd 
unlock the gates to all the radicals. 

Dr. Parker is a psycho-analycist, bearded and 
bespectacled. Alarming at first — one is inevitably 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ill at ease with a psycho-analycist. It is not vanity 
to say that one instantly becomes self-conscious, as 
if the deep-eyed man were already analysing one, 
and looking down into a heart that perhaps does 
not bear looking into! Finally I discussed the thing 
with him openly. I told him that I knew nothing 
of psycho-analysis and didn't want to — that I 
thought it encouraged people to become even more 
concentrated upon themselves than they were al- 
ready! Then, the ice being broken, we talked 
openly and simply about anything and everything. 
He took his glasses ofif and became quite unserious. 
It was due partly to him that when I stood up to 
speak I was in a flippant mood. Either the party 
took its mood from me, or I from it. I rather 
incline to the latter. At all events, I said all I 
wanted to say, uncompromisingly, about Russia. I 
put forth all the best that I had seen. I risked 
the label of Bolshevik and propagandist. Indeed, 
as I pointed out to them — Bolshevism is over . . . 
the New York papers have it in headlines — ! 
England has signed the trade agreement, Lenin 
has ceased to be Red and Bolshevism is over! 
Therefore I am free at last to say what I like. And 
the people who listen have no longer the cause for 
panic! I went on lightly and humorously and they 
laughed, laughed even when I didn't expect them 
to. 
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Thursday, March 24, 1921. 

At my exhibition at Knoedlers', continue to meet 
new people and make new friends. This after- 
noon I was introduced to Morris Korbel, the 
Czecho-Slovak sculptor. He asked to know me 
and was complimentary about my work which is 
much from a fellow sculptor. He is good look- 
ing in a foreign way — wild haired, deep eyed, 
deep voiced, rather intense and dramatic in his 
personality. He told me he was going to Europe 
in a week as his wife was there. He said he was 
intellectually starved, and must get back for a 
while to the old world. He said that I should find 
I could only live here about nine months on end 
without going away. He was, nevertheless ap- 
preciative of the generosity and hospitality of 
America. "They take their pound of flesh," he 
said, "but they are generous and appreciative in 
turn. But one must go, and come back, and go 
again . . ." he said. 

He admitted that he went to Europe this time 
with some reluctance, as he had planned to go to 
Mexico where he had a portrait order to do Presi- 
dent Obregon. I suddenly had a vision . . . "Are 
you definitely not going to do that order?" I asked 
him. He said he thought not. "Then will you 
hand it on to me . . .?" I saw my new road mapped 
out before me. Korbel did not say a great deal, 
he probably thought I was not serious or that it 

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was not practicable. "The Mexicans are not like 
the Bolsheviks — " he said warningly. (One up for 
my friends the Bolsheviks!! Even reliability is 
only a matter of comparison — !) 

He asked me to lunch with him tomorrow at 
the Ritz and then I will pursue this thing further. 

Friday, March 25, 1921. 

Lunched with Morris Korbel at the Ritz, and 
had an orgy of discussion. He is full of thoughts. 
He sees the world from the point of view of a 
looker-on. His analysis of the United States and 
its inhabitants was very illuminating. I am still 
watching, and undecided. He has his views. He 
thinks it is a great country and (with the excep- 
tion of New York) more appreciative of Art and 
more encouraging than any other country. More- 
over, it has developed its own Art. We compiled 
together a goodly list of American artists. He 
talked about the extraordinary advance of America 
in architecture, for instance — over any other coun- 
try in the world today, and its efficiency in Science, 
and Hygiene. He described to me "the west," the 
agricultural districts, the orchards — how they are 
planted, and drained. How the sluice gates open 
once a day and acres are watered systematically. 
How these people just "rape Nature," as he ex- 
pressed it, and get all there is to be had out of it. 
We reviewed the miracle of the race. How all the 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

foreign peoples come into the melting pot and turn 
out an American type. He said, and truly, that 
with the exception of England, no country breeds 
women with such long legs and thin ankles and 
wrists. They are beautiful. And as for the men 
— where else do they rise from working men and 
become Kings? ("In Soviet Russia!"! murmured.) 

Kenneth Durant fetched me at six-thirty and we 
took the over-head-railway and went to East Side. 
Where, making our way through a maize of play- 
ing children, we dined in the Roumanian restau- 
rant. It was as though in a few minutes one had 
suddenly gone abroad to a foreign country. I 
have never had the sensation in New York that I 
was a foreigner, perhaps that is because I am half 
American, or because we all speak English. 

In the East Side people talked Italian or else 
that other strange language that newspapers are 
printed in, and which looks like a mixture of Rus- 
sian and Arabic ! A newspaper boy brought in the 
evening papers to the Roumanian restaurant while 
we were there, and when I asked him if he couldn't 
bring in something I could read, the other people 
laughed. We ordered some steak for our dinner, 
and when the waiter brought enough for a school 
treat I exclaimed, and he said, "In Broadway they 
serve the dishes — here we serve the food !" They 
did indeed; even sharing it with a starving cat I 
couldn't get through with it. The restaurant was 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

rather a good one and very clean. I reproached 
Kenneth for not having taken me somewhere with 
more local color. I hate being treated as a Bour- 
geoise. 

The evening was very warm, and the restaurant 
door was open. East Side has its background of 
sound like any other place. In Pittsburgh it is the 
sound of the mills, like the roar of the sea. In 
New York it is the trams and the traffic and the 
overhead trains. In East Side (at night) it is the 
voices of laughing playing children. What heaps 
of children! The streets were full of them. One 
tumbled over them, one bumped into them, one 
dodged them, as in the side streets of Naples. Some 
of the smaller children, smaller than Dick, sat 
crumpled up in a doorway or leaning against a 
lamp-post, weary and sleepy. It was nearly ten 
o'clock at night, and they were not in bed. The 
streets were strewn with papers as after a picnic. 
I said to Kenneth, "Why aren't the streets 
cleaned?" and he said because people were so busy 
cleaning the streets where I live. I said, "Why 
don't the children go to bed?" and he said because 
there were twenty people to a room, and it was 
easier to leave the children out in the street as 
long as possible. 

We walked and walked, a long way, through ill- 
lit side streets where women sat out on their door- 
steps, watching sleeping babies in perambulators, 
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or suckling them at the breast. The main streets 
were brightly lit, and the stalls by the sidewalk 
were doing a busy trade in tawdry goods as in the 
Zucharefski Market of Moscow. We bought roast 
chestnuts and ate them as we walked along. I 
bought a pot of red tulips growing — for Dick. 
They were cheaper here, but they were heavy and 
Kenneth had to carry them, but he didn't com- 
plain. 

Saturday, March 26, 1921. 

We have been here nearly two months, and in 
those two months we have learnt that American 
ideas are on the whole, good ideas. There is usual- 
ly reason in most things that Americans do, and 
good reasons, as for instance, in prohibition. But 
there is another prohibition quite different from 
the one that most people talk about, and it's unex- 
plained. It concerns Dick. When I say that it 
concerns him I do not mean that it affects him 
alone. He is merely voicing the great "why?" of 
a million children, who may not walk on the grass 
in Central Park. "Keep Off"— "Keep Off" is 
'written everywhere. It takes a great manv men in 
uniform to enforce this prohibition. Strang men, 
vigilant men, diligent men, too. Just as the police- 
men seem to be picked for Fifth Avenue traffic, 
policemen who seem to be entirely friendly 
towards children, whose one idea is to help them 

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across the street and to laugh and joke with them 
as he does so (Dick has several friends on the 
Avenue) just so the parkmen seem to be picked 
for their job. They are hard men, cold men, they 
smile not neither do they joke. They are like people 
who have been too long with children. I learnt 
my lesson a few days ago when for a great treat 
Dick took me for a walk in Central Park. With 
the perfect courage of an ignorant person, I tossed 
my head, drank in deep breaths of fresh spring air, 
and strode out across the open. It was the first day 
of spring, and how good it seemed. Suddenly 
Dick seized my arm and pointing to a distant blot 
in the landscape said to me, "That is for you — 
don't you hear the whistle?" I confessed I heard 
a whistle, but I thought someone was calling a 
dog. "That is for you to get off the grass — ." But 
I was a long way on the grass. I seemed to be in 
the middle of a sea of green. True, no one was on 
it but myself, but that had not seemed to 'me 
peculiar. If I thought about it at all I just thought 
Americans were too busy to loaf like me, in the 
sun. 

"Are you sure we mayn't walk on the grass?" I 
asked Dick. He was quite sure, and made some 
signal to the whistleman to the effect that we would 
remove ourselves to the far distant path. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked him. And 
then I learnt what prohibition means; that you do 
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the thing that is prohibited just as often as you can, 
until you are found out. What a game for one's 
early days — to dodge the law, and deliberately 
break it on every possible occasion. 

I asked a park-keeper whom I met later on 
what the regulations were and learnt that towards 
May there are certain places in the park that may 
be walked on, in turn. This will be indicated by 
a flag flying high or a flag lying low, I couldn't 
quite make out. The children had been unlucky 
this year, the keeper said, because there had been 
so little snow, which enables them to go anywhere. 

Dick is unlucky, because he arrived in New 
York in February, and will leave before May, so 
he has missed and will miss any chance of walking 
on the grass! 

This afternoon we were lent a car, so I drove 
him, with Louise, to a part of Central Park that he 
has talked of for days. It was not the grassy part 
(the view of that green space was enjoyed very 
much. It was most gratifying and pleasing to the 
eye as we sped by luxuriously in our limousine!). 
I dropped him at the wooded hillside which is 
like the country. You can see no houses, just 
wooded slopes and streams and waterfalls and 
ponds. He took his submarine and his steamer 
with him, and I left him there. When he came 
home in the evening I asked him if he had en- 
joyed it. He said, "The park men wouldn't let me 

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sail my ships — but I did!" He went on to explain 
that whenever he put his ships in the water a 
whistle was blown. Finally he and Louise got 
under a bridge, and under cover succeeded in 
breaking the prohibition rule for some time. 

''Some day — ," and there was a gleam in Dick's 
eye that was something more than just the naughty 
look of a mischievous boy — ''someday when I am a 
man, I shall have a gun, and I shall shoot every 
man with a whistle." "Oh, Dick," I protested. 
"Yes I shall — I shall be a Revolutioner!" 

And that is surely the efifect on the young of a 
prohibition that cannot be explained. Dick knows 
of no reason why he should not walk on the grass, 
nor sail his ships in the streams; what is grass for? 
Why is there a park at all? There is one pond in 
Central Park for children's ships, and there is a 
playground for children's balls. But one small 
pond and one dusty playground, what is that 
among so many children? In such a big park? 

On St. Patrick's Day, Dick and I came back 
through the Park from the Metropolitan Museum, 
and the procession was still passing by. People 
might not even stand on a rocky eminence to look 
over the wall. A parkman stood there, whistle in 
mouth, proudly, defiantly, king of all he surveyed. 
Over the wall came the sound of the bands, and 
the marching feet, but only the park-keeper could 
see the procession. Big-eyed children stood there, 
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open-mouthed, at the sound of the "Wearing of 
the Green." Truly he was not an Irishman, that 
park-keeper. And now I feel sad, and rather 
anxious, as spring is coming. I have work that 
keeps me a while longer in the city. Should I 
send Dick to a boarding-school in the country, so 
that he may enjoy the spring? So that he should 
not have daily to endure the sight of green grass 
viewed from a narrow gravel path, a path in which 
he may not even dig, or build sand castles. Must 
I send him away so that he shall not grow into a 
law-breaker and a "Revolutioner"? 

What we really want to know, is: Who does 
the green grass grow for, in Central Park? 

Monday, March 28, 1921. 

Have spent the Easter week-end in bed. I slept 
almost on end for sixty-eight hours, mentally and 
physically perfectly exhausted. It was heaven be- 
ing in bed, and I didn't attempt to read nor write, 
or even think. 

Today I arose, slightly rested, and lunched with 
Emil Fuchs. Louis Wiley was the only other 
presence. I like seeing him, I always discover 
which way the wind is blowing. We talked about 
England's trade agreement with Russia, and I said 
— rather provokingly perhaps, "I suppose America 
Is waiting to see if Russia really has anything to 
trade with. It would be a great joke if she has, 

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and if England gets it all." Mr. Wiley answered 
rather maliciously, "England can have it — she 
needs it, and it may help her to pay us back — ." 
So! That's the undercurrent, is it? 

Tuesday, March 29, 1921. 

I dined in Brooklyn and spoke afterwards at 
the Twentieth Century Club. This had been ar- 
ranged for me by Mr. Keedick. I asked what sort 
of audience I should have to talk to, (meaning 
would it be radical, reactionary, artistic, or Semitic 
— ) and was told they were "ladies and gentle- 
men!" Thus illuminated I trimmed my sails ac- 
cordingly. I dined with some charming people 
first, and to my astonishment, there was a most 
beautiful Sir Joshua in the drawing-room. It was 
a lovely nude bacchante, and at her feet a little 
faun playing the flute. I asked incredulously, "Is 
that a real Sir Joshua?" My hostess answered, 
"Yes, and I confess I am very fond of it, though I 
never should have thought I could have a nude in 
my drawing-room, especially with a daughter 
growing up." 

Friday, April i, 1921. 

I have had rather a wonderful morning. I was 
taken to the apartment of a man who collects 
Italian primitives. He is young, as yet only about 
twenty-seven, and one of the amazing products of 
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this country. His mother, they say, was a washer- 
woman, (why not?) and he determined to go 
through college. At Harvard he paid his own way 
by buying up the trouser press industry and syndi- 
cating it, and putting himself at the head. He 
made a fortune by pressing the undergraduates' 
trousers. This is the "on-dit," probably it is quite 
inaccurate, and he would tell a very different story. 
Anyway it's a good story, and the fundamental 
thing is that he arose, from nowhere, out of the 
blue, so to speak. What his work is now I didn't 
hear, but he is collecting Italian primitives. We 
saw them all before he came in. There were Bot- 
ticelli's, Fra Angelico's, Filippo Lippi, Bellini, 
and countless others. Each one was lovely, and 
one felt much loved. The rooms were simply but 
beautifully furnished with Italian pieces. In the 
dining-room the table was laid, and next to the 
owner's place was a book from which he reads out 
a little prayer, for grace, before each meal. It 
sounded affected, but I was assured it came from a 
deeply fervent spirit. I marvelled much over this 
young man before I saw him. His bedroom was 
chaste and hung with Madonnas, he had tall 
candles and things that suggested holiness! There 
was only one personal note in the whole place, the 
photograph of a very modern lovely girl. 

Later, the owner arrived, a perfectly simple, un- 
affected, enthusiastic boy, who knew all about his 

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treasures and could tell about them. He had the 
face of a Mantegna picture, and the stiff white 
modern collar made him of today. Otherwise he 
was quite in keeping. There certainly was no pose 
about him, and no suggestion of nouveau-riche. 

Every day that I am in this country I am more 
amazed. What has produced this curious type, 
that earns millions and prefers to spend on pre- 
Raphaelites rather than on race horses? 

I lunched with Emil Fuchs, who had a nice 
party, among whom Frank Munsey, a curious per- 
sonality. Intellectual but so, so cold. I managed 
once to make him half smile. He came after- 
wards to Knoedler's, he looked at everything, 
silently, and left hurriedly without any expression 
of opinion. 

I dined with the Rosens, and Benjy Guiness and 
McEvoy and Purcell Jones were of the party. 
While they went on to the box that Laurette Tay- 
lor had given me for "Peg of My Heart" I went 
to the Town Hall and made a Pacifist speech at a 
Disarmament meeting. 

Sunday, April 3, 1921. 

Dined with the Swopes, it being Mrs. Swope's 
birthday party. 

I had a long talk with Barney Baruch who came 
in afterwards. I had not seen him since that be- 
wildering night when I first arrived, and thought 
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he was Mr. Brooke! I've never forgotten him, he 
has a dominating personality, and a nose and a 
brow that I keep modelling in my mind while I 
am talking to him. But he is "the king with two 
faces," he can look hard and Satanic one minute, 
kind and gentle the next. He has a great love of 
Winston, and a loyalty to Wilson. His ideas about 
life and the world in general are fine. He has 
the dynamic force of a Revolutionary, but his 
idealism is to get the world straight sanely, calmly 
and constructively, not violently, bitterly and 
destructively. He believes in an ideal League of 
Nations, and in reasoning rather than arming. 
The answer to all that is, that nothing gets done 
at all except by force, bitterness and violence, and 
so Russia is the only one among us who has gotten 
something done! Perhaps if there were jnore 
Barney Baruchs in thd world something might 
evolve, who knows. I don't really know enough 
about him and his life, and to what purpose he 
puts his activities. 

He talked to me a good deal about his father 
and mother, especially his mother. He has that 
Jewish love of family. I always like to hear a 
man eulogise his mother, it makes me realize my 
own responsibility towards Dick. If a man can 
remember the things his mother said to him in 
early life, then my talking to Dick is not as vain as 
it would seem. 

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Jews are wonderful parents, and wonderful 
children. Moreover they are the cultured people 
in the world. They chiefly are our Art patrons. 
It always amuses me in this country when people 
ask me if Russia is entirely run by Jews. I didn't 
meet half as many there as I have met here I 

Tuesday, April 5, 1921. 

Dined with Mr. Otto Kahn at his house, a small 
party, and went on afterwards to Carnegie Hall 
to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra which was 
heavenly. 

At dinner we discussed the psychology of men 
and women here. He has a fine analytical mind. 
We talked of the American woman being starved 
emotionally. He said about the position of women 
in different countries, "Here they are an orna- 
ment, in England they are an object, in France they 
are a passion." It is a good summing up. 

We talked about Bolshevism. He had an amus- 
ing point of view, so different from the usual 
"foaming-at-the-mouth" reactionary. He said that 
the Russians are naturally an anarchistic and re- 
bellious people incapable of self-government. That 
Bolshevism was a form of self-expression that 
would pass, as everything would pass — but why, 
he said, take it so tragically? It was none of our 
business ! The world had lost its sense of humor. 
Our attitude towards the Russian experiment 
92 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

should be that of interested spectators. But the 
idea of getting cross about it, of exchanging furi- 
ous notes, of sending soldiers to "walk up the hill 
and down again." It was ridiculous I He talked 
of Bolshevism as a great play, and the Bolsheviks 
as being living actors, fulfilling their part 
dramatically, but that play acted in French, or 
English, or Italian, was another thing. What 
would succeed in Russia would fail in transla- 
tion. . . 

Wednesday, April 6, 1921. 

A Heaven-sent day. As warm as the best sum- 
mer day in England. I went out without a coat. 
They tell me it is a cold day in comparison to what 
we will get. Never yet have I found anything 
warm enough. Rome in June was just satisfying. 
If I might only go down into Hell and sculp the 
Devil, how happy I would be. 

Ever since March 21st, I have spent almost 
every afternoon at Knoedlers, but today, I jibbed, 
it was too good a day to stay in. Besides, I feel as 
if I can't bear compliments and praise another 
moment. It was wonderful at first, one felt flat- 
tered, pleased, amused. The various remarks were 
entertaining, but they are almost without variety, 
and in the end one longs not to have to smile the 
smile of appreciation that will not come off, there 

93 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

seems so little to say in reply to "How wonder- 
ful ! How clever you are, how living they are, how 

brave you were, what brutes they look "I 

just stand first on one leg and then on the other 
and look silly and feel worse. If anyone bought 
anything, or wanted to be done, it would be differ- 
ent, but I feel that Knoedlers have generously taken 
a great deal of trouble and been awfully kind, and 
gained nothing. People treat my exhibition as a 
sort of free "Madame Tussaud's," and there the 
thing ends. 

I'm told it has been a great success. If success 
is measured by the quantities of people who visit it, 
then "Yes" — the critics have certainly been splen- 
did to me. For the rest, if I have any complaint to 
make, it is due, I suppose, to the "slump" that I 
am told prevails. A slump is prosperity compared 
to Europe, and I have not been here in normal 
times, so can make no comparison. 

I feel rather with the policeman in the Avenue, 
Dick's friend, who said to Louise, "Look at them! 
Look at them!" pointing at the motors, "all day 
long they pass back and forth. Gee! How rich 
people must be, no wonder the world comes and 
asks us for relief funds — !" 

I dined with Kenneth Durant and Ernestine 
Evans, Crystal Eastman and a young Art critic 
from Boston. We went afterwards to see "Em- 
peror Jones." This is practically a one man play, 

94 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

and its success is due to the genius of Gilpin, the 
colored actor. It is a grim and powerful repre- 
sentation, that the "grand Guignol" might well 
produce. The only thing is that it deals so en- 
tirely with the psychology of the colored race that 
no European would quite understand it. I would 
have lost a lot of it if Kenneth hadn't explained 
here and there. I see the negro in a new light. 
He used to be rather repulsive to me, but obviously 
he is human, has been very badly treated, and suf- 
fers probably a good deal from the terrific race 
prejudice that prevails here. It must be humiliat- 
ing to an educated colored man, that he may not 
walk down the street with a white woman, nor 
dine in a restaurant with her. I wonder about the 
psychology of the colored man, like the poet, 
Mackaye, who came to see me a few days ago and 
who is as delightful to talk to as any man one could 
meet. In this play the civilized negro adventurer, 
who has established himself Emperor of an island, 
has to fly to the woods in the face of a rebellion. He 
grows weak from hunger, and finally, overcome by 
superstitious fears, goes slowly mad, and scene 
after scene in which he is practically alone on the 
stage, shows the man going back further and fur- 
ther towards his origin. It is terribly interesting, 
and at the end I felt the colored actor had scored a 
triumph, and that the white audience could not be 
feeling very proud. 

95 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Friday, April 8, 1921. 

Mr. Villard asked me to lunch down town with 
the staff of The Nation. We were nine people 
and conversation was general. I heard a good deal 
of American politics which it interests me to 
absorb and not have to take part in. They also dis- 
cussed the English Labor Party, and the strike 
that is going on at this moment. England is 
threatened with a "Triple Alliance" strike, 
(miners, railwaymen and transport workers). It 
has never happened yet though it has been at- 
tempted. We all agreed in believing it will not 
be accomplished this time either. Some day, per- 
haps — yes, and then look out! But the time has 
not come. Meanwhile, as Mr. Villard prophesied, 
if the worst comes to the worst, Lloyd George will 
call a general election and will be re-elected with 
flying colors. 

I heard a certain amount about the treatment by 
the United States of the native Indians on the set- 
tlements. Apparently there is not a country any- 
where that has not its skeletons in its cupboards. 

In the afternoon I went for the last time to 
Knoedlers. The exhibition closes tomorrow. Mr. 
Purcell Jones, who has an exhibition of decorative 
water-colors upstairs, was very amusing, relating 
to me some of the remarks of people who came in 
yesterday when I was away. 

Apparently two or three women came on after a 

96 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

lecture about Russia. One of them, looking at 
Lenin, announced in a loud voice, "It's not the mur- 
dering that I resent, but it's the destruction of the 
finest collection of butterflies in the world." An- 
other, looking at the bust of Krassin (whose pure 
Siberian features, so full, as I think, of dignity 
and character) said that he reminded her of a 
Chinese Jew — it was the first time I had heard 
of there being any in existence — as one lives one 
learns. 

Concerning the marble baby on a very low 
pedestal in the middle of the room, he said, "All 
the women who come here just stand over it and 
shower it with hairpins." I laughed, and to prove 
his assertion he went and looked on the carpet at 
the base of the pedestal. Sure, he picked up sev- 
eral straight away! 

Thursday, April 14, 1921. 

Lunched with Emil Fuchs, and walked home by 
Fifth Avenue. In front of the Public Library a 
meeting was going on. A woman was speaking, 
and it seemed to be an appeal for funds for "suf- 
fering Ireland." I mingled with the crowd in 
hopes of hearing something startling. But I only 
heard a jumbled mix-up about Women's Suffrage, 
and then Belgium, and about the Queen of Bel- 
gium being a full-blooded German, "but that 
didn't stop you going to help Belgium," the speaker 

97 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

said. I couldn't wait long enough to see the con- 
nection with Ireland. As I walked away I re- 
volved in my mind the letter I had from papa this 
morning in which he told me that Stenning, our 
Scotch game-keeper, who had lived on our Irish 
estate ever since I was a small child, has just been 
murdered in his house. 

My thoughts were suddenly broken into by the 
unusual action of a man who skipped backwards 
in front of me, and before I realized it a huge 
kodak was aimed at me. A few paces further on a 
man of rather humble appearance addressed me as 
"Miss Sheridan." He took his hat off and held it 
in his hand while he told me that he had heard me 
lecture, and had read everything I had written. "I 
am a Russian" he said — "and I felt that you had 
the good of Russia at heart ... I just wanted to 
thank you." I thanked him, shook hands, and 
walked on. Queer place. Fifth Avenue! 

Saturday, April i6, 1921. 

Colonel William Boyce Thompson sent his car 
for me at twelve, and I drove out to his place in 
Yonkers on the Hudson. There I found a Russian 
gathering! Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Robbins, 
Colonel Thatcher and the Wardwells. The house 
is beautiful, full of pictures. I wonder if Bot- 
ticelli could have had any premonition that he 
was painting to decorate the stately homes of 

98 



MY AMERICAN DIARY . 

America. I keep wondering why there are enough 
Botticelli's to go round. 

We lunched in a room that had six French win- 
dows facing the garden that slopes down to the 
Hudson River. At least, so I discovered after- 
wards, but the windows were thickly and tightly 
and most carefully curtained so that one could not 
at all see out. All during lunch I longed to pierce 
the veil. Immediately afterwards we went out 
into the sun on the terrace, and I begged that we 
might sit out, and not in. Conversation on Russia 
was very stimulating, but as I was none too sure 
of my host's exact sentiments, I talked rather 
guardedly. He may be labelled "the Bolshevik 
millionaire," but it does not mean that he is Bol- 
shevik. Almost any unprejudiced person is labelled 
Bolshevik in this country! Colonel Thompson told 
us that when he got back from Russia, the papers 
published his photograph between Lenin's and 
Trotzky's ! When Thatcher got back. Col. Thomp- 
son told him there was might little difference be- 
tween hero and zero, as it is understood here; and 
having experienced certain things, they went to 
meet Raymond Robbins on his arrival to prepare 
him. 

Never had I heard three more hearty laughters, 
than these three men reminiscing over their recep- 
tion in this country on their return from Russia. 
I said to them, "It's all very well to laugh, but 

99 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

knowing what you^ do, mightn't you go to the 
rescue of the floundering stranger, landing in equal 
plight on your shores?" They laughed the more, 
"We like to see it ... we like to watch, and then 
gather the sufferer to our fold !" 

Later they talked about Wilson, to which I list- 
ened in silence with awe. It interested me to hear 
that Wilson is the author of a work entitled "The 
New Freedom" which was discovered at the head- 
quarters of the I. W. W. and declared to be sedi- 
tious literature! Lansing's book did not pass un- 
mentioned — there seems to be but one opinion 
about it. Someone in Washington described it as 
the "vituperations of an enraged white mouse." 
Raymond Robbins gave an imitation of Lansing 
leaning forward in his chair, wiping his glasses, 
and with sly glances at the clock, whilst he, Rob- 
bins described in fifteen minutes what happened 
in Russia in one year. Col. Thatcher boasted that 
he had been given an audience of twenty-five min- 
utes! But in either case the result was the same! 

Raymond Robbins is a very ill man. He looked 
desperately tired, and he was, as I understood, 
going ofif to a rest cure somewhere. I like him and 
I liked very much Mrs. Robbins, she has a keen, 
searching, restless face, almost hawk's eyes. She is 
head of a Women's Labor Organization. She was 
awfully nice to me (everybody was), about my 

lOO 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

book, and about my adventure. It is overwhelm- 
ing, and I feel undeserved. The book is so humble 
and unpretentious, the adventure so obviously 
worth doing. 

I got home at six o'clock and an hour later dined 
with a compatriot, Frank McDermott, and having 
nothing planned we drove to Broadway. This is a 
marvelous place at night. The whole locality is 
illuminated with electric advertisements. They 
baffle description. The American advertiser, not 
content with lighting up his advertisement, must 
needs have movement in those lights. All of them 
dance, twinkle, rain, run, sparkle, circulate. It is 
metaphorically a shrieking competition. There are 
even a pair of dogs pulling a sleigh, the man in the 
sleigh flicks his electric whip in the air, and the 
dogs just gallop! Far fewer lights on a Corona- 
tion or a Peace night in London, bring \forth 
crowds into the streets, walking arm in arm *'to see 
the illuminations." In Broadway it seems to be a 
perpetual Coronation Night! 

We went into the "Capitol" film palace. The 
first time I had been to one. It is gigantic, and 
the house was packed. An opera sized orchestra 
started off by playing Wagner to us. The house 
listened intently. The American public is very 
musical, even if it has gone expecting to see a film, 
it will listen to Wagner without whispering. I be- 

lOI 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

lieve the American people are as appreciative of 
music as the Russian people. 

After that, the orchestra accompanied a choir 
that sang southern songs. There is great character 
and a good deal of romance in these songs, one 
never fails to be stirred. When "Dixie" was sung 
a large proportion of the audience burst forth into 
spontaneous applause. I have never heard "Dixie" 
played in this country without its arousing ap- 
plause. Finally we sat through a rather dull film 
play — they can be dull sometimes ! 

/Thursday, April 21, 1921. Washington, D. C. 

* I arrived in Washington at six this morning. I 
don't know what I've come for, I didn't really 
plan it.) Soukine* it was who suggested my com- 
ing, and clinched it by writing to Countess Gizycka 
to tell her so. This elicited a telegram from 
Countess Gizycka asking me to dine on Friday. 
Furthermore my letter to Sir Auckland Geddes 
produced a telegram asking me to lunch at the 
British Embassy on Thursday. Therefore, I came 
when I did. I have lunched and I have tea'd at the 
Embassy, I have walked round the town instead of 
dining. It is very warm and very lovely. The 
trees are in full leaf, there is a wind but it is a 
warm wind— Washington is a pleasant contrast to 



♦Who was Minister for foreign affairs under Kolchak. 
lOZ 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

New York, it is large and airy and leisurely and 
dignified. It looks like a new town that is incom- 
plete. As one drives outside, one does not get into 
slums and suburbs as with any other town, but sud- 
denly one is in green pastures, it is like the bound- 
aries of a village. 

I feel very lonely, Dick is in New Jersey. 

Friday, April 22, 1921. 

._ Paul Hanna, a friend of Kenneth Durant's, 
asked me to lunch, he and Mrs. Hanna (everyone 
is married in America — however young) came to 
fetch me. We went to a restaurant near by where 
we found our party, among whom, with his wife, 
was Sinclair Lewis, the author of the much-dis- 
cussed "Main Street." The restaurant we lunched 
in was rather cleverly decorated, so that one had 
the impression of having a tent awning overhead, 
and being surrounded by Italian stone walls with 
vases, and a peacock was silhouetted against a sap- 
phire blue sky. The proportions of the room, and 
the height of the roof lent themselves to this treat- 
ment. I was informed that it had been recently con- 
verted from a Baptist Chapel! How strange we 
Christians are! No oriental would thus desecrate 
his temple. The party amused themselves at my ex- 
pense, telling American humor stories, which I 
couldn't laugh at. I said I didn't think the Ameri- 
can paper LiFE was funny, they admitted they 

103 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

didn't think so either, but that twenty out of a hun- 
dred jokes in Punch compensated for the other 
eighty. It was a funny party — I knew what train 
of thought Paul Hanna represented, but I wonder 
if the others did. 

After lunch most of us went off to the bookshop 
and I exchanged "Mayfair to Moscow" for "Main 
Street," duly autographed. 

I went to tea with Mrs. William Hard where a 
great many people drifted in and out. Among 
them Alice Longworth, with whom I made a date, 
and Mrs. Brandeis and her daughter, who invited 
me to go to tea on the morrow to meet Mr. Justice 
Brandeis. I have a great curiosity to see him, I 
have heard his name over and over again. Every- 
one says to me, "You should do a head of Bran- 
deis." I am told he looks like Lincoln. Innum- 
erable people tell me also that I should do a head 
of Mr. Baruch. "The replete eagle with a kindly 
eye" as someone here described him to me. If he 
were only poor, and nobody, he would probably 
consent to sit to me, and be quite happy doing so. 
This lack of vanity in man is new to me. I have 
never met it before, I do not understand it. There 
are types in this country not only fine physically, 
and interesting, but there is the brain, the force 
and the power of achievement behind it. 

Soukine fetched me for dinner at Countess 
Gizycka's. Senator Edge took me in to dinner — 
104 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I was sent in first as the guest of honor. On my 
other side was Mr. Lowry, whom I had met at tea 
at Mrs. Hard's. We stumbled in the course of 
conversation on a mutual friendship with Henry 
James. It happened by chance, but it was a happy 
chance. He loved Henry as all Henry's friends 
did. He nursed him through his last illness. Mr. 
Lowry had not guessed that I was the Sheridan to 
whom the best of Henry James' letters are written 
in the last volume. That tag of Soviet Russia 
which is tied tightly round my neck had obliterated 
any idea of my being anyone else! We talked of 
Rye, and of my own home, and the mention of 
Brede Place recalled to my vision spring in Eng- 
land, the peace and the remoteness of Sussex; "so 
far away," as Mr. Lowry said. So far away, in- 
deed, that it seems like another world, and some- 
times I wonder if I'll ever get back there. 

I met "Mr. Baker of the Mint" as he was de- 
scribed to me when I asked who he was. A man 
with a very fine, characteristically American face, 
and a charming personality. Later, when every- 
one else went on to a ball, Mr. Baker took me for 
a drive in his car before dropping me at the Shore- 
ham. I asked him what Mr. Baker he was, 
whether he was the Mr. Baker of the Wilson Ad- 
ministration. He obviously was laughing at my 
ignorance and explained that he was just plain 
Mr. Baker, although he had been in the Wilson 

105 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Administration, but that he had always been sim- 
ply Mr. Baker, and still was the same, and not a 
very important person — not important enough, for 
instance, to have his head done! By which, I sup- 
pose, he means that he is not Secretary for War 
Baker — ? Whoever he is, (and I suppose I shall 
learn in time about people in Washington, just as 
I have in time learnt about people in New York!) 
I like him, I like his face, and I like his talk, al- 
though he is "the man of the mint" who refuses to 
buy Soviet gold. I asked him why, "Is it because 
you are a very high principled man and you feel 
the gold belongs to someone else?" 

"I am a high principled man but it is not for 
any principle that I will not buy Soviet gold — ." 

"So much the better," I said, "there will be more 
for England and we want it — and it will come to 
you just the same I suppose in the end, only it will 
come through us — I" 

At that moment we passed b}^ what seemed in the 
night to be columns of a Greek temple standing out 
against the night blue. It was the Lincoln Me- 
morial. We drove along the river which looked 
mysterious and beautiful with its bridges and re- 
flected lights. As we flashed by the lights of the 
lamps I saw azaleas of every color, banks of them. 
The night was as warm as any in an English sum- 
mer. 
1 06 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Saturday, April 23, 1921. 

Lunched with Sinclair Lewis at the Shoreham. 
He is full of imagination. One of the few Ameri- 
cans I have met who is not submerged by domestic- 
ity, although he is married. 

He tells me he wrote four or five novels before 
he wrote ''Main Street," but they were not suc- 
cesses. I asked him why that had not discouraged 
him. He laughed, he said it was no use being dis- 
couraged, that writing novels was all he could do, 
he might starve at it, but he was incapable of any 
other form of work. (Truly an artist!) He had 
expected some people would like "Main Street," 
but he had not expected it to sell. It was a great 
joke being famous, though sometimes a great bore. 
He was extremely funny about it. 

I went to tea with Mrs. McCormick, then on to 
see Mr. Justice Brandeis, who expected me at his 
chambers. He was very nice, though rather shy. 
He certainly is extremely like Lincoln, but a Lin- 
coln who has not suffered. Certainly a fine head 
to do. I am told he is one of the big brains of the 
United States. He is a friend of F. E. 's* and of 
Lord Reading. He said things about England and 
the English that made me proud — we talked for 
quite a while, but one does not talk at ease when 



*F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead, Lord Chancellor of 
England. 

107 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

both are strangers confronting each other for the 
purpose of conversation. The best thoughts and 
talks I elicit from people when I am working on 
them, and when it is only necessary to speak if 
the idea comes, and where a gap of silence is pos- 
sible and restful rather than embarrassing. Under 
these conditions I get people to give of their best. 

I dined with X and we talked about the 

future. But I am like a nun who, when tempted to 
run away from her vocation, reflected that her 
lover would no longer love the nun with short hair 
and no veil. My work is my veil — I must work 
and keep working, though it entail a sacrifice. I 
remember years ago a man, (and he was an Ameri- 
can) said to me, ''Choose your path; either the 
path of companionship and love, or the path of a 
career with all it entails of purpose and of loneli- 
ness." And he is right — . 

Sunday, April 24, 192 1. 

Motored with Admiral and Mrs. Grayson to 
some place outside Washington to see Barney 
Baruch's race horses. The stable is by the side of 
the race course, but the District of Columbia has 
legislated against racing, so now the track is used 
for a training ground. Queer form of govern- 
ment this! How strange it would be if the Coun- 
ty of Surrey suddenly decided by a local County 
Council to suppress racing, there would be no more 
108 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Ascot, or if Liverpool suddenly decided to have no 
more Grand National. I wonder if the English 
would stand it or rebel. Americans seem to me to 
be a strangely well-disciplined community; there 
will never be a revolution in this country! 

I lunched with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and 
his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lodge, and a beautiful 
girl, his granddaughter. Although I hardly knew 
the Senator I feel as if he were a relation. He was, 
until recently, a trustee for the children under my 
mother-in-law's* will. We talked at great length 
about Mother Mary, whom I loved as he also 
loved her. We discussed her sorrows, her cour- 
age, her sense of duty. Almost she played the role 
in life of a great tragedienne, but with no appeal to 
the gallery. Very silent, and very lovely and very 
reserved she was, and her face was the face of Our 
Mother of Sorrows. 

Few people know about my "Mother Mary." 
But Senator Lodge knew and it was like bringing 
her dear ghost-face back again to life. After lunch 
Colonel Harvey fetched the Senator for a drive, 
the future ambassador to Britain is not an im- 
posing individuality. He has the American sense 
of humor which is seldom lacking, and much 
there may be inside him that is not evident on the 



♦Daughter of John Lothrop Motley, author of "The Rise of 
the Dutch Republic," etc. 

109 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

surface. I felt no impression of him at all. It 
seemed to me a pity that the United States should 
not be represented by one of the types of America, 
with a square jaw, and clear bright eyes, and force- 
ful personality, such as I meet over and over again. 
They dropped me at the Shoreham and from 
there I proceeded out into the country in an open 
car with .... Such a lovely afternoon, hot enough 
to motor without a coat. We drove for miles but 
it seemed impossible to get away from other cars 
and other people however far we went. Finally 
we stopped in front of a lane, left the car and went 
rambling through someone's private woods. There 
were three kinds of wild flowers I had never seen 
before, and whole bushes of wild azalea in bloom. 
We gathered armfuls. It seems too wonderful 
when I think of our tender care in growing azaleas 
at home, that they should grow wild here. And 
there was a big yellow "swallowtailed" butterfly. I 
have seen it in Italy. In England it does not exist. 
I remember as a child buying one for my butterfly 
collection, it cost half a crown. (I wonder if the 
price has gone up since.) We passed by a pond, 
and the sound of frogs was like the sound of birds, 
and quite as loud. In England frogs never say a 
word. I suppose these are a different kind of frog, 
or else we haven't enough heat to rouse a protest 
from them. It was a very heavenly afternoon, out 
into the stillness of the country, in the sun, in the 
spring. 
no 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I dined at the Medill McCormick's. A big 
party at small tables in several rooms. I sat next to 
Mr. Richard Washburn Child on one side. He is 
talked of as a possible United States Ambassador 
to Japan.* He looks very young. He asked me 
why I was "here," which I took to mean America, 
not Washington, and I found myself telling him 
everything that I haven't told even some of my best 
friends. He seemed to understand my feeling about 
the adventure of life. Some people never awaken, 
others start with their eyes wide open. I began late, 
I feel as if I had only waked up when I got to 
Russia. Perhaps I was slowly stirring ever since 
I began to work five years ago. But those years 
were too laden with overwork and anxiety as to 
the future, and the effort of attaining. I was con- 
scious then of belonging to a world, but not to the 
world. But now I know the world is all mine for 
the discovering. I belong to every bit of it, and 
it all belongs to me. What care I where I live, so 
long as I find work, and sunshine, and from out the 
crowd one hand extended towards me in friend- 
ship? 

When I got to Russia, I realized a great big new 
country that was thinking and working in a way 
I had never dreamt of. It was a tremendous awak- 



*Since writing he has been appointed U. S. Ambassador to 
Rome 

IIT 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ening. And now, what hazard has led me back to 
my mother's country? I find it is another great big 
new world, working and thinking in just as new 
and different a way, and as differently as Russia. 
But the size of these countries is what appeals to 
me. In Russia I could have (but I didn't) taken a 
train for days, and travelled to other parts and been 
still in Russia. Here I have not, but I will — go 
west, go south, go north. For days and days I shall 
be able to go. From a commercial provincial town 
out into the land of endless flowers where there are 
no seasons, and the land gives out two crops a year. 
I have a great desire to see more, and more, and 
yet more. To see it all, in fact. But I am tired 
(already) of civilization, of the luxury of baths 
and telephones, and the overabundance of food. 
I am tired of people, even of people who are kind, 
and people who are brilliant. I want to take Dick 
and get away somewhere into the wilds. When- 
ever I ask if there is some village in the hills; 
with an Inn, as for instance, in Cornwall, or in 
Italy, I am recommended a primitive wood, where 
there is "a colony." I want to get away from the 
colony! Can't I live for a while, as at Lerici, see- 
ing only peasant people? Even outside Rome, 
within half an hour by rail, I found myself in Ar- 
cadian groves, where it seemed that only Pan had 
lived. I am told that here it is impossible, how- 
ever remotely one travel to get away from the tele- 

112 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

graph, telephone and motor cars. From England I 
had visualized this country, as consisting of New 
York, Washington and Chicago and Boston, and 
for the rest, that one mounted a horse, and rode 
out over prairies towards mountains. And I mean 
to find it is so. The land of the Red Indian must 
still contain some primitive unreclaimed spots. 
Anyway, there it all is, and mine if I choose to go 
and look for it. The world is a great wonder- 
place with wonder-people in it. I am drunk with 
love of it, love of the beauty and the capricious- 
ness, and the unexpectedness of it. I want to see 
it all — Mexico, China, Egypt, Greece and back 
again to Russia, working all the way, hunting 
heads, and reading people and never arriving at 
any understanding, but loving it always as one 
loves the person who is big, generous, elusive, full 
of moods, and never to be understood. 

Sometimes, though, I wish I could learn some- 
thing from it all. I wish I could understand some 
of the problems, and have a few convictions. As 
I sit here and ruminate in front of my open win- 
dow I think of many things, in a kaleidescopic 
way. It is the first time I have had leisure to think 
since I landed in America. I have heard so many 
varied opinions over here, and I just begin to wish 
I knew for example: whether the Soviet form of 
government is right, or even partly right, or on 
the right trail, and whether the majority of the 

"3 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

world which condemns it, is wrong, or frightened, 
or sensible. 

I wish I knew if human nature on the whole is 
very grand and fine, or whether it is chiefly murky 
and ugly and very selfish. 

I wish I knew if there is such a thing as love, 
apart from maternal love, or whether it is all only 
passion. 

I wish I could make up my mind as to whether 
civilization is a very valuable evolution, or a very 
great curse. 

I wish I could decide whether I want to live in 
America, France or Russia, and whether I should 
like my immediate headquarters to be in New 
York or Washington. 

I wish I knew how much the people who are 
nice to me really like me, or how much I am a 
curiosity. 

I wish I knew whether I am happier than any- 
one else or happy at all. 

Tuesday, April 26, 192 i. 

Alice Longworth fetched me a little after 
twelve (a piping hot day). We drove to the Sen- 
ate. For about half an hour before lunch we sat 
in the gallery of the Senate Chamber. By strange 
chance a Senator called LaFollette was holding 
forth upon Ireland, and demanding that the gov- 
114 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ernment of the U. S. recognize the Irish Republic. 
It was strange to come to the Senate to hear home 
politics. I listened to censorious remarks on Great 
Britain and I felt that everyone was agreeing, both 
on the floor of the Senate as well as in the gal- 
leries. Senator LaFoUette, with his gray hair 
standing on end, and his face pink with passion, 
left his desk, strode up and down, around and 
about, the while he shook a formidable finger at 
the empty seats around him. They were not en- 
tirely empty, however, for Senator Reed was lis- 
tening with attention and approval. I had met 
Senator Reed at Mrs. McCormick's party on Sun- 
day night, and the subject of Ireland had arisen 
between us then. He told me he was contemplat- 
ing a journey to Detroit to speak at a meeting for 
"Funds for Ireland." I said to him that night: 
"If you are going to ask for funds for Ireland 
you must needs abuse Great Britain." He an- 
swered that the one did not absolutely necessitate 
the other. But I surmised he only said it out of 
politeness to an Englishwoman. I feel I have met 
the anti-British wave at last. It is here — and it is 
in the Senate! But what can one say in self-de- 
fense about Ireland? Senator LaFollette reiter- 
ated all the arguments that were asserted in Mos- 
cow, and to which I could not answer a word. 
Such as the war having been fought to protect the 
small nations, self-determination by the people, 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

freedom of Poland, of Jugo-Slavia, of Czecho- 
slovakia, of God knows what else. 

In my own heart I think the small nationalities 
are the causes of war, but having insisted and pro- 
claimed their rights we certainly must be consist- 
ent. The only objection I have heard yet to the 
Irish Republic is the notion that she would be a 
base for an enemy fleet in the next war. To which 
the reply is obvious. She is further away from 
us than France. Besides, she was a base for the 
enemy fleet in the last war. Our problems would 
on the whole have been lessened if Ireland as an 
independent nation had openly sided with the en- 
emy. We could have declared war on her, instead 
of being hand tied in the face of her enmity, by 
pretending that she belonged to our cause. Other 
theories are, that Ireland would not be our enemy 
if we gave her independence. Of course Ireland 
should have her Republic. I say it not as an Irish 
patriot, or even as an Irish sympathizer, but just 
as an onlooker, it seems to me the only logical pos 
sibility. I suppose the British Empire would 
lose some revenue over it, money is always at the 
bottom of all these problems. 

When LaFollette had finished, Senator Reed, 
who had once or twice interrupted (to ask for in- 
formation, not to criticize) crossed the house and 
shook hands with Senator LaFollette. Senator 
Reed has a handsome, regular, rugged face; he is 
ii6 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

an oldish man, gray haired, but his individuality is 
full of fight and aggression. He surely must be of 
Irish origin. Senator Borah was pointed out to 
me. He has a curious, wide, crumpled-up, force- 
ful face, and long hair. He has been held out to 
me as one of the heads that would be interesting 
to do. Henry Cabot Lodge was talking in a back 
row with the Mormon Senator Smoot. I remem- 
ber the latter when I was here ten years ago. I 
met him one evening at a party, and papa intro- 
duced us. On that occasion the conversation 
drifted upon forms of government, and I believe 
I said (papa has often reminded me of the story) 
that I believed in feudalism, my idea being a cas- 
tle surrounded by small huts, which at sight of 
the enemy eject their inhabitants into the castle for 
protection. Senator Smoot said in answer to this: 
"And I gather from this that you. Miss Frewen, 
would be living in the castle." I have progressed 
since then! I feel as if it were not I who had ad- 
vocated feudalism ten years ago, but some other 
person within me who is a stranger to me, who 
is neither mother nor child to me. 

Senator Lodge joined us at lunch in one of the 
private offices. I sat next to Senator Curtis, who 
is one-eighth Indian, so he told me. The only 
trace of it was in his fine hawk nose. I told him of 
my hope about returning from Mexico through 
the National Parks and he told me a lot about it, 

117 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

and much that was interesting about the Indians 
and promised to help me in my scheme, if I will 
write and let him know, where and when I want 
to go. We discussed the psychology of mixed 
races, and I wondered whether the faint drop of 
Indian blood in my own veins could possibly ac- 
count for my dislike of civilization, and my long- 
ing to get away into the wilds alone. He thought 
that even such a remote strain might account for 
this. 

After lunch we went downstairs to Senator 
Medill McCormick's office. I had not yet met him 
as he has been away. I dined at the McCormick's 
again in the evening. I liked the Senator. They 
are both wondrously hospitable. I am over- 
whelmed by Washington and want to remain here 
or come back. Every day I put forth a deeper 
root. New York has been hospitable, but whereas 
in New York I feel I am asked because I am a 
curiosity, here there is real warmth in the hos- 
pitality. I like all the people I have met, and the 
women are intelligent and interested in politics, 
not like the society women in New York, who 
seem to affect the blase aloofness about Washing- 
ton and all concerned. As for Alice Longworth, 
she is magnificent — "one of us," as an Englishman 
said to me, meaning it as the highest compliment 
he could pay! She is not "someone" merely be- 
cause she is her father's daughter. She has her own 
ii8 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

very forceful personality. I feel she is the woman 
who should have gotten into the precincts of Lenin 
and Trotzky, not me! And they would have ap- 
preciated her! She is the Madame Kolontai type. 

May 7, 1921. New York. 

I have had a good week, quite one of the best 

since I arrived here. I had an order from Mr. C. 

to do a bust of Miss Spence for the school. Mrs. 

C, when she came to talk to me about it, told me 

that Miss Spence had to be treated as Royalty. 

Royalty do not alarm me, and I expected Miss 

Spence would! But she was far more interesting 

than that. 

Every morning except one Miss Spence had sat 

to me from 10:15 until i o'clock — and we have 

hardly stopped talking the entire time. I have 
enjoyed every moment of the sittings, and subcon- 
sciously our talks have helped to mature certain 
plans in my mind, plans as to the future, and the 
education of my children. Miss Spence is among 
the largest minded people I have met over here. 
I like her points of view. I like her big heart, her 
adoration of immature youth, her understanding, 
and her quick grasp of situations. Moreover her 
head is extremely interesting, although very dif- 
ficult to do. Her mouth has a kindly sense of 
humor without being weak. Her eyes, when she 
talks, light up with inward vision and enthusiasm. 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

We have talked a great deal about America, 
and I find myself talking to the Scotchwoman in 
her, not to the American born. It becomes a very- 
impartial discussion. The position of woman 
here as compared with England is an unworn-out 
subject. The attitude of Englishmen toward the 
marriage state, their sense of possession, their 
domination, the laws of divorce, the laws of cus- 
tody of children, we have reviewed it and deplored 
it. 

To-day there is an account in the NEW YORK 
Herald of Lady Astor in the House pleading for 
mothers, that they may have at least an equal 
right to their children, and as Miss Spence pointed 
out, how strange that a woman from this country 
should have to do it for the English women! 

We discussed "Main Street," which we are 
both in process of reading. I have already said 
that its author is the Thackeray of the United 
States, but Miss Spence said even more. She said: 
"It is Balsac-ian." 

Monday, May i6, 1921. Philadelphia. 

In New York they told me Philadelphia was 
"slow." I came to Philadelphia on Saturday. It 
has not been "slow." It has been breathless. I 
am staying with friends outside Philadelphia, in 
an area which seems to be known as the "Chilten 
Hills." Perhaps the Chilten Hills are more en- 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ergetic than Philadelphia, and that may explain 
the breathless haste. I do not know. I have not 
been given time to analyze it. 

I came to Philadelphia because the "Arts Al- 
liance" club offered me an exhibition and asked 
me to open it (to-night) with a lecture. 

Sunday was one uninterrupted twelve-hour 
rush in which one met over and over again (at 
places miles apart!) the same friendly faces that 
I had learned to know on Saturday night. This 
is the way the overworked American rests on Sun- 
day: 

At lo o'clock I was taken out riding. Only once 
before in my life — and that a year ago — had I ever 
ridden astride. I was mounted on a thoroughbred 
hunter, but mercifully it was as quiet as a lamb. 
We rode in the sun for two hours. Going through 
peoples' private grounds seems to be no offense in 
this country. Some time ago — at Bernardsville, 
New Jersey, I walked for miles unmolested 
through peoples' woods and gardens, enjoyed their 
fountains and their flowers and their lawns. Yes- 
terday was much the same. We rode peacefully, 
not "across country," but across property. Honor- 
ably sticking to the paths, of course. 

People don't surround their grounds with walls 
and hedges and ditches here as in England. There 
appear to be no lodges and gates, and furious peo- 
ple. A gateless entrance is a great temptation, it 

121 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

looks to me like an invitation. No Communist 
could war against these conditions. It really gives 
one a sense of fraternity. I need no garden of my 
own, if I may walk in my neighbor's. His azaleas 
look just the same as mine would look, and his 
fountain sings the same song. 

Returning from our ride late, we jumped into a 
i2-cylinder two-seater, in our riding clothes, and 
drove at a speed of fifty to the house of friends 
who had invited us for cocktails at midday I I felt 
rather as if we were film playing! At the friend's 
house I also got an order to do a bust. Thus stim- 
ulated, we returned at a speed of sixty. Got home 
barely in time to bathe and change and start off 
again for a luncheon party. 

After luncheon the entire party motored over 
to Mr. Stotesbury's house. This incident de- 
serves comment. Mr. Stotesbury's house is just 
completed. It is a sort of Versailles. In reply to 
comment I heard someone say: "It was not really 
built so very quickly. It was begun five years 
ago." Five years in which to begin and complete 
an American Versailles! Complete and perfect 
inside as well as the shell. Five years ago the site 
on which it stands was a wild countryside which 
harbored the fox. To-day it is levelled, terraced, 
planted and planned. Fountains tumble and splash 
arrogantly. Neatly trimmed box hedging pursues 
its Italian design, big trees brought from a dis- 

122 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

tance thrive. It seems that you can bribe quite 
aged trees to survive transplantation that otherwise 
would die, and altogether one realizes that money 
can remove mountains or create them. Only — I 
discovered one rebel. My friend the orange tree, 
recognizing no King but the sun, had refused to 
grow oranges to order, and had to submit to having 
these wired on, but had produced no blossom! 

The house was immense; faultless in architec- 
ture, and full of beautiful pictures and furniture. 
Nothing seemed to have been omitted in the plan- 
ning. There was nothing to criticise. But like 
those people one meets occasionally, whose souls 
are still very young, the house lacked everything 
that time alone could bring. But Versailles was 
new once. 

I suppose it gave lots of employment, and I 
wonder who earned the most, the designer, the 
contractor or the worker. 

To-night I did the really brave thing. I stood 
up to an audience in Rittenhouse Square and 
talked about Lenin and Trotzky! 

Everyone listened most politely, but of course 
I could not expect them to be really sympathetic. 
They were cold, though attentive. I don't believe 
they were really interested about Russia at all. 
However, they knew it was about Russia I was 
going to talk, and the room was crowded to over- 
flowing. In the dim remoteness I caught sight of 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Kenneth's keen archaic face. I met it while I was 
in the middle of my lecture. It rather paralyzed 
me. I was not talking my best, I cannot, to an un- 
responsive audience, and I felt ashamed that Ken- 
neth should hear me for the first time, and in such 
a way. He told me afterwards that I had done 
all that was possible, but asked if I understood his 
reaction. He was bred in Rittenhouse Square! 

Later someone in the crowd asked me rather ex- 
citedly if I had heard the news, that "the Soviet 
Representative was here among us this eve- 
ning. . . ." My informant said it half incredulously, 
not knowing in the least who the Soviet Represent- 
ative could be, and wondering if I would not be 
rather frightened at the idea of having been lis- 
tened to by an official! 

Someone else said to me: "I know what your 
political views are, you've entirely given yourself 
away . . ." "Explain," I said. "Why of course 
you are a Bolshevist, because at the end of your 
lecture when you offered to answer questions you 
said they must not be economic questions, because 
at the mere thought of economics your mind be- 
comes a perfect blank. That is exactly the case 
with all Bolshevists!" 

Tuesday, May 17, 1921. New York, 

I dined with the G.'s to meet Mr. Hearst. I 
have heard almost more about him than anyone 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

in America, and I was curious to see him. Great 
was my disappointment when I was told that 
Hearst was not there. He had been called away 
suddenly to Boston. 

Mrs. Hearst came, and I sat next to Mr. Bris- 
bane. I did not feel he was amiably disposed to- 
wards me at first, but I was careful not to discuss 
Anglo-American relations or the Irish question, 
and when I told him I was contemplating educat- 
ing my children over here Mr. Brisbane melted a 
little. We talked about the absent Hearst, whom I 
realize is a great storm centre in this country. I 
must meet him before my curiosity can be allayed. 
I want to get my own impression of him. Russia 
has taught me that individuals are not as the world 
says they are. Mrs. Hearst, who is very pretty, 
was treated like a queen. Men sat on the floor at 
her feet, admiringly, and social reformers sat at 
her elbow beseechingly, and she smiled and as- 
sented, and listened and promised, and did all that 
a perfectly good queen should do, and like a per- 
fectly real queen, jewel crowned, she arose and left 
before anyone else. But not without my telephone 
number and address. Mr. Brisbane eventually 
dropped me home in his car, he too promised, ih 
the name of the queen, that I should meet Hearst, 
and maybe — who knows? Meanwhile the mys- 
tery of Hearst is still unsolved for me, but I see 
that I shall now have to add to my daily's the 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

New York American because of Brisbane. Al- 
ready I read the Herald on account of Frank 
Munsey, The World because of Herbert Svvope, 
and the Times because of — well, because it origin- 
ally god-fathered me! As well as the Nation, 
The New Republic, the Freeman, Liberator, 
and Soviet Russia, most of whom have given me 
"Luncheons" ; also Arts AND DECORATIONS, whose 
co-editor once told me in unmeasured terms ex- 
actly what he thought of me for attaching undue 
importance to the Soviet leaders by having the ef- 
frontery to go and portray them ! 

Thus, as my knowledge increases, my working 
time decreases! 

Saturday, May 21, 1921. 

Dick and I and Louise started off for the week- 
end, not knowing in the least where we were going 
to. Someone fetched us, our tickets were taken 
and we were put on a train for Philadelphia. At 
Philadelphia we were removed to a private car. 
The day was steaming hot, and Dick enjoyed 
standing out on the balcony at the end of the car. 
It reminded me of my journey to Moscow, the 
private car that met Kamenefif was just like it, 
perhaps it was made in the U. S. At Harrisburg 
we had an hour to wait and went motoring in the 
town. First we visited the Capitol to see George 
Barnard's sculpture groups. These are attached to 
126 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the building on either side of the entrance, and 
they do not seem rightly to belong to the place. 
Perhaps Barnard is too individualistic to be archi- 
tectural. We then drove along the riverside to the 
Country Club, w^hich was opening that day. I 
must say, that if Harrisburg happened to be one's 
"home-town," or if by accident of fate one's father 
or husband's work attached one there, I can im- 
agine living very happily in one of those riverside 
residences, bathed in sunshine, and prefaced W'' 
a lawn and trees — overlooking the great wide river 
with its islands and rapids, and the mountains be- 
yond. It was truly gradiose. 

Having in one hour "done" Harrisburg, the 
capital of Pennsylvania, we then continued our 
journey until we fetched up in a place called 
Chambersburg. This seemed to me remote, and 
detached from the world. 

That evening a dance made of me a total wreck, 
but the next day was heavenly, spent in sleeping 
on the grass in the shadow of a bush. Dick tossed 
hay and said it smelt of home, and there was a 
rivulet which engulfed his boat, but he did not 
cry, he climbed onto the sluice gate and made be- 
lieve the wheel was steering a real ship, and that 
comforted him. It was real, wild, ragged country, 
and we were happy. But it was a long way to go 
for one night and one day. On Sunday night we 
travelled back on the private car, sleeping fitfully. 

127 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Since then Dick's toy trains are all private cars, 
and I had hoped to make a good Socialist of him. 
All my work and plans are ruined. He seems to 
have become so very exclusive! 

Friday, May 27, 1921. Philadelphia. 

Having deposited Dick in New York, and hav- 
ing had a second inoculation for typhoid (pre- 
paratory for Mexico) and feeling quite ill, I re- 
turned to Philadelphia on Tuesday. The place is 
becoming almost familiar to me. It is not unlike 
an English old-world town, there are parts of it 
that recall Winchester, or even remote bits of Lon- 
don. I have come to work. When I was here 
last someone commissioned me to do her husband. 
"If you can get him to sit for you," she said. I 
have got him. It is true he made every effort to 
evade me, to escape me, to postpone me. But I 
was determined not to be beat, and I gave him no 
loophole. Dr. Tait McKenzie has lent me his 
studio, and my victim comes there every morning 
from II to I. He says he hates it, and he arrives 
protesting and resentful. But I like him, and wt 
talk quite pleasantly all the time without stopping. 
I think he resents it less than he imagines. He has 
a good head, typically American. 

When I get back in the afternoon to my friends 
in the Chilten Hills, where I am staying, I work 
in the loggia, on the portrait of their little daugh- 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ter. She is the same age as my Margaret, and 
makes me feel rather homesick. To-morrow I re- 
turn to New York, my work completed. 

Sunday, May 29, 1921. New York. 

Dick and I with Kenneth, caught an 1 1 130 train 
for Croton. We lunched with Crystal Eastman 
and her husband, Walter Fuller, in a roadside cot- 
tage surrounded by roses. It was real country and, 
luxuriantly green, with the fresh immaturity of 
impending summer. In the orchard on the steep 
grassy hill behind the house the children climbed 
a cherry tree, and Dick brought me greenleafed 
branches hanging with ripe sweet cherries. After 
lunch we walked up the road to see the view from 
the top of the hill. There is a sort of Colony at 
Croton, and every other house is inhabited by 
someone one knows, or who knows the other. All 
work-worn journalists, artists and Bohemians gen- 
erally, who come there with their children for a 
rest. The houses have no gardens, the grass grows 
long and the rose bushes are weed tangled. Now 
and then a bunch of peonies survives. The cot- 
tages have almost an abandoned look, for the town 
toilers are too weary to work in their gardens when 
they get there. Towards the hill summit I noticed 
a wooden verandaM cottage, looking rather ne- 
glected and lonely, the ground sloped down to a 
stream where some yellow and some purple iris 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

bloomed amid the waste. On the post box at the 
gate were inscribed the two names: Reed, Bryant, 
and sure enough it was the summer cottage of 
Jack Reed and his wife. My thoughts shot 
straight across to Moscow, and to the grave under 
the Kremlin wall. At the top of the hill we lay 
down in the long grass under the shadow of a 
giant tree, and felt like insects, with the butter- 
cups so much higher than ourselves, and the tall 
seed grasses like slender trees above our heads. 
Dick, who was unrestful, and looking for work, 
built a wall of loose stones between us, "to separate 
us," he said, and that accomplished he proceeded 
to pull down a post and chain and dig up another. 
In my half somnolent state I was aware of much 
hammering and cracking and splitting but took no 
notice. After awhile Dick came running to me, 
and in some trepidation asked anxiously if he were 
likely to be put in prison. 

"What on earth for?" I asked. 

"Because I've been destroying the man's prop- 
erty," he said. 

"Whatman?" I asked. 

"The man whom this place belongs to." 

"Be happy," I advised him; "be happy and en- 
joy whatever the work is you have undertaken even 
if it's the destruction of the other fellow's prop- 
erty." And so Dick went back, and the sounds of 
hammering were mingled with a love song he'd 
130 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

learned from the gramaphone and no man dis- 
turbed our peace. 

Returning whence we came, after a time, we 
sauntered into the garden of Mr. and Mrs. Board- 
man Robinson, there on a slope, overlooking the 
tennis court and the wonderful distant view of the 
Hudson; a large party eventually foregathered. 
Quite apart from the fact that it was pleasant, con- 
ditions made it extremely attractive. It was as 
though Greenwich Village in summer array had 
been dumped down with almost deliberate pagean- 
try upon the grass. There were men in open- 
necked shirts, and there was one in a green 
sweater, another in a butcher blouse shirt and cor- 
duray trousers like a French ouvrier. Women in 
yellow, and orange, children in royal blue, ,or 
bare-armed and bare-legged in bathing suits; 
lovely splotches of color grouped among the tree 
stems. Boardman Robinson, looking like a primi- 
tive man, with his red unkempt beard, bushy eye- 
brows and hair standing on end, lay on his stom- 
ach in the grass listening intently to Walter Ful- 
ler's little sister, who sang old English folk songs 
to us, and sang them gracefully without any self- 
consciousness. Floyd Dell, the author of "Moon- 
Calf," was there, and a great many people I didn't 
know. And all the children were good (by a 
strange coincidence there was not a girl-child 
among them . . .!) and all the people were happy. 

131 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

One or two mothers asked me (and I looked at 
them twice to see if they were serious) when in my 
opinion conditions in Russian would be sufficiently 
adjusted to enable them to take their children 
there for education. 

That evening, about 8:15, the train 'disgorged 
us in New York, and Dick, looking truly prole- 
tarian, went triumphantly two hours late to bed. 

Monday, May 30, 1921. 

I spent all the afternoon sitting to Emil Fuchs. 
He painted me last 15 years ago. Since then much 
water has flowed under the bridge. He did me 
then in a big Gainsborough hat and a fashionable 
black dress. I had just emerged from the school- 
room and my ambition was to look like a widow. 
To-day he did me in my yellow working smock. 

I have known him since I was twelve years old, 
in the days when he worked in London and Ed- 
ward VII was his patron. Success leaves no im- 
print on Fuchs. He is one of those modest ever- 
dissatisfied-with-himself, over-sensitive beings. He 
has never grown the extra skin which is one's ar- 
mor in dealing with the world. Fuchs is almost 
too sensitive, too deep feeling to be able to live 
at all. All his thoughts are beautiful thoughts, and 
if the world is not as beautiful as he demands it 
should be he feels almost suicidal with depres- 
sion. He is the most generous-souled, pure-visioned 
132 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

person I have ever known. He likes very few 
people, and makes few friends, but those he does 
make are more devoted to him than other people's 
friends are to them ! 

The picture began awfully well, I have great 
hopes and he was wildly enthusiastic. It was one 
of the few occasions on which I have seen him 
happy. 

June 2, 192 1. New York. 

Yesterday I went downtown to the Mexican 
Consulate. As soon as I walked in, Tata-Nacho 
saw me, and this strange looking descendant of 
Montezuma, in a musty office, showed me every 
possible attention. It was not his fault that the act- 
ing consul sent me word that he was not sure if 
he could give me a vise, or not, as Bolsheviks are 
not wanted in Mexico! Think of Mexico becom- 
ing so respectable ! I was asked to return the next 
day for my answer. This morning, feeling disin- 
clined for a downtown journey on chance, I tele- 
phoned, demanding my vise by post or my refusal 
by phone. "There are other places to go to for 
the summer," I explained, "and I don't have to go 
to Mexico !" The answer was that everything was 
in order. 

I dined on the Astor roof in Broadway with M., 
who sails for Europe in the morning en route for 
Moscow. It is a delightfully planned place such 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

as I have never seen before, and mixed w^ith our 
talk of Russia, making a fitting background, 
"Macy's" Scarlet Star, the communist emblem, 
stood defiantly illuminated against the sky. 

Monday, June 13, 192 1. New York. 

We stayed with our cousins, the Jerome Law- 
rences, at Rye, for the week end. It is on "the 
Sound." We motored to the yacht club and lay on 
rocks in the sun, getting more and more burned. 
Dick, after paddling for some time, demanded to 
bathe. To my amazement, I was told that not only 
must he put on a bathing suit, but he must undress 
in the bathing house. Dick asked "why?" He is 
accustomed every year in England to be sunkissed, 
either in the sea or in the woods — whenever there 
is a warm enough sun. I have taken many photo- 
graphs of him and Margaret naked on the hill- 
side and among the flowers. There is nothing on 
earth more beautiful than the body of a child. 

I recall my horror when a nun at Margaret's 
Convent told her that she must never look at her- 
self because the human body is "disgusting" (she 
used the term), and Margaret asked her, "Who 
made our bodies? and who made our clothes?" 
Such an attitude of mind in a nun is perhaps not 
unexpected, but one is surprised at the lack of sim- 
plicity in a great primitive country. But in the 
United States the Puritan origin has dominated 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

over all other races with which it has eventually 
become amalgamated; stronger than the Latin is 
the Puritan — stronger than the German, the 
Dutch, the Irish, or the Jew. In this amazing 
country even the mature foreign element is bent, 
broken, molded, forced into an American! And 
in a very short space of time — it is this standardi- 
zation that suppresses individuality. In this par- 
ticular instance I suppose it is good that the masses 
should bathe in suits, it is good for the masses that 
the bathers should undress under cover, and so it 
goes on from little to larger things, from unim- 
portant details to larger issues. Some day per- 
haps, when, there is time to stop to take a breath 
a few individualities will be allowed to live among 
the standardized — at present those few slip ofT 
abroad, and live there! But I am not complain- 
ing, I am only wondering why with all its restric- 
tions, I like living in it better than I like living in 
the freest country on earth — England ! 

On Sunday night I had one of the great sur- 
prises of my life. It will be as memorable as any 
of the big events that have come to me. We were 
sitting on the piazza at dusk, and I asked, point- 
ing to the bushes: "Am I mad? What is that?" 
*'That is a firefly." I had heard vaguely of fire- 
flies, but no one had ever described to me what a 
June night in America could be like. W. B. Yeats 
has written of Ireland that "the night was full of 

1.15 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the sound of linnets' wings," but I have not read 
the poet who has sung about the fireflies. As the 
night became darker, the world became full of 
small, twinkling, winking, dancing lights, from the 
highest tree-tops down to the grass. I ran upstairs. 
Dick was asleep. I hoisted him on to my back and 
carried him, still sleeping, out into the wild 
orchard across the road. Presently Dick lifted a 
sleepy head from my shoulder and looked around 
him. "It's the Germans shootin','' he said. "No," I 
corrected, "it's fairies." He gave a little giggle of 
delight and exclaimed: "Fairies! To guard us? — " 
And as I walked towards the dark trees in the dis- 
tance he clung around my neck. "Don't let's get 
lost in fairyland." The crickets were making an 
unholy and flippant noise. It was all very merry 
and happy. There were darting lights all around 
us, in the long grass at our feet, in the bushes over- 
head, against the darkness of the distance, exactly 
like the scene of the treetops in Peter Pan. On 
our way home Dick said, "I don't think they're 
fairies, I think it's the stars have come down to 
play." 

I looked up at the sky. It was full of stars — 
stable, serious, solemn stars. What star would not, 
if it could, drop down to earth and play hide and 
seek with the moon shadows and mischievously 
rouse all the crickets on a June night. Yes, I think 
I agree with Dick, they were young baby stars, 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

making merry. In two minutes from the time his 
head touched the pillow Dick was fast asleep 
again. I went in search of Mary Brennan, the 
Irish maid, who is Dick's friend. "Mary!" I said, 
"when you see Dick in the morning, remember he 
has been playing to-night with stars." "Not with 
firebugs?" Mary answered with perfect under- 
standing. 

Friday, June 17. New York. 

My last night before sailing, and I was taken 
to dine on a roof in Brooklyn. It was the roof of a 
hotel, and it was very cleverly made to look like 
the deck of a ship. From that deck one had a 
most superb view of one bit of New York — a mon- 
umental group of buildings which included the 
Woolworth Tower and seemed to rise up out of 
the sea. In the distance was the Statue of Liberty 
holding up her torch for the ships at sea. We 
watched the sun set behind the tall buildings, and 
the lights and shadows seemed to produce a cubis- 
tic picture. But I was silenced by so much beauty. 
Is it my artist eyes, I wonder, that make me so ap- 
preciative of the world? How strange that the 
Earth is always beautiful, and Man's buildings 
sometimes are, especially with surroundings and 
background of color and light and shade. It is 
only in the human mind and the human body that 
God seems to have failed sometimes. 

^7 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Sunday, June 19, 1921. 

S. S. Monterey. En route for Vera Cruz. 

Dick and I are so happy. It is calm as a lake 
and gets better every hour. 

The first day the color of the sea was a deep 
Prussian blue. The next day it was pure sapphire. 
To-day it has been the same color as the sky, so 
you could not tell where they met on the horizon, 
and so transparent that one could see the fishes 
deep down. There were flying fishes too. They 
rose up at our ship's prow and skimmed over th.^ 
sea surface like little silver aeroplanes! 

The ship seems so small and the sea so large and 
we seem to be going so slowly, so leisurely, as if 
all the time in the world were at our disposal and 
we simply didn't care where or when we fetched 
up. 

Last night it was agreed that Dick should stay 
up late as a great treat. He wanted to see how 
night comes on the ocean. Almost as if it were for 
Dick's appreciation, night played up in the most 
dramatic fashion. From behind ai cloud bank 
there appeared a tiny speck of orange. It grew in 
as short a space as could be counted in seconds into 
a big round moon, a cloud that drooped over it wa? 
lit up like a human face by firelight. Dick asked: 
"Who is the figure in the sky?" It looked like a 
giant Destiny gazing into an orange crystal. The 
reflection made a golden rippling pathway straight 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

across the sea to us. Dick, who was sitting on the 
ship's bow with his legs dangling over and one 
arm tightly clinging round my neck, suddenly 
kissed me, fervently, which was exactly what I felt 
about it! On the opposite side there was a light- 
ning display for our benefit. It came from one 
point, always from behind the same cloud bank. 
It turned the sky into the most perfect Valkyrie 
background. When Dick asked me what the stars 
were like to touch: "Are they soft, or do they 
burn?" I had to tell him they were great big 
worlds like ours. Dick felt very small — we both 
did. 

Whatever Mexico may or may not have in store 
for us, the journey alone is well worth while. The 
contrast after four bewildering months in New 
York is extreme. The peace and the beauty are 
reviving and one gets back one's sense of judg- 
ment, which one is apt to lose in the crowd. 

How unimportant it is, whether anyone thinks I 
am or am not Bolshevik, how little it matters if 
someone has turned their back on me at dinner, or 
unduly praised whatever work I've done. How 
completely nothing matters except to be on speak- 
ing terms with oneself, and one cannot be unless 
one is living one's own life, and not playing a 
part. All of which sounds very pedantic. I be- 
lieve one is apt to get pedantic if one is alone. 
No one on board is the least interesting, but one 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

young man has insisted on attaching himself. He 
is a Mexican architect, who has just graduated 
from the University at Philadelphia. He will be 
very useful at Vera Cruz with the luggage. There 
is a middle-aged American who inspires that un- 
failing American reliability. When I told him 
what I had heard of Mexico and Mexicans: 
"Forget it!" he said; and so I am facing my destin- 
ation with a blank mind. 

My feelings at leaving New York were conflict- 
ing. In a sort of way I felt I was leaving home. 
The compliment (for it should be a compliment) 
has two sides : Home of course is Home ; but one is 
always rather pleased to get away. The U. S. is 
so conventional and comfortable, so proper and 
business-like, so well regulated, so absolutely just 
what it should be, it is like married life! To leave 
it, to launch out into the blue unknown is excit- 
ing and stimulating. It seems to me I belong to 
two rather prosaic countries. I, who love color, 
song, romance! There is no reason why one should 
have to choose between them, each supplies some- 
thing the other lacks, and I might as well own 
them both. But Old World and tradition have be- 
come museum preserves. They are no longer 
working concerns; and the word "Imperialism" 
gives me a pain in my head. So much for my fa- 
ther's land. In my mother's country I find a heap 
of things that irritate me, but it's a "live-world," 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

efficient, and infinitely large. There is space, 
without Imperialism, a new world, without decad- 
ence, and without tradition. Although it is reac- 
tionary and conservative on the surface, it is at 
heart young and progressive and opens wide areas 
to new ideas. 

Thursday, June 23, 1921. 

We arrived in Havana and went ashore about 
10 A.M. Not having so far made friends with 
anyone on board, Dick, I and Louise went o&. 
alone. From the tugboat that brought us off our 
ship we stumbled on the quay into the arms of a 
guide, who stood in wait. Unable to speak a word 
of Spanish, we allowed him to attach himself to 
us. We were to have his guideship and the ser- 
vices of a Ford car for three hours, $10 complete. 
They were suffocating hours. The sun beat down 
on the canvas hood of the little car which bumped 
and rattled through the uneven, narrow streets. 
The guide, true to type (it recalled old days in 
Italy!) was boring and garrulous. I wanted to 
get a general impression of Havana, and my con- 
templation was rudely broken into when the Y, 
M. C. A.'s building was insistently pointed out to 
me, and similarly other buildings of no interest. 

The Cathedral where Columbus was buried 
alone stands out in my memory as a thing of 
beauty, but we got no further than an inner court- 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

yard — the Cathedral itself was closed for repairs. 
The town seemed to have innumerable, modern 
marble monuments, each one more in ill taste than 
the other and each Cuban patriot thus commem- 
orated had to be described at length by our un- 
shaven guide. As for the living Havanians, they 
seemed to me to be a people asleep. Everywhere 
they sleptf at full length on the ground in the 
squares; in the avenues or leaning in doorways — 
even our chauffeur was asleep in the car when we 
came out from stamping letters at the post office! 
People who walked in the street looked at us won- 
deringly and sleepily, open-mouthed and heavy- 
eyed. It may have been the siesta hour of the 
town. After lunching at the Hotel Ingleterra we 
made for the quay, and there chartering a motor 
boat explored the harbor before returning on 
board. That was the part Dick liked best. He had 
been very bored with the town, and was greatly 
relieved to hear that Havana was not Mexico, as 
he has great expectations of our ultimate destina- 
tion. 

A few new passengers joined the ship in the 
evening, a few old ones having left. Those that 
have been on board from New York, seem to have 
done the usual ship trick, which is to break up into 
couples and walk round the ship's angles at dusk, 
arm round waist. One looks on almost cynically, 
the thing is so inevitable. My cynicism and aloof- 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ness makes me feel old. Dick, however, knows the 
whole ship — the youngest and the oldest passen- 
gers are his devoted friends; the officers, the stew- 
ards and the ship hands are his intimates. The 
captain, who teases him with great earnestness, is 
taken very seriously and more respected by Dick 
than loved. But the little girl passengers he treats 
with almost silent contempt! 

The only friend I have on board is the "reliable 
American," and he proves to be of the type that 
confirms all my views about American men. He 
just is reliable, and thoughtful and infinitely kind. 
Nor is he a negligible personality. He is the 
president of an important company — and was ar- 
rested and condemned to death by Villa during 
one of the revolutions. Why he is alive to tell the 
tale is just a case of luck. He has the simplicity 
and the national pride of the usual American, but 
he can speak French, Spanish and Italian, and 
even read them. It is he, and not the young Mexi- 
can architect, who promises to be useful with the 
luggage at Vera Cruz ! 

We paused five miles out from Progresso, to un- 
load some cargo and take on some new passengers, 
all of which was done with infinite labor by steam 
tug and barge. One of our fellow travelers is a 
Syrian Jew going ashore at Progresso and invited 
me to go with him to see the town, but the reliable 
American assured me the Syrian would delay me 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

sightseeing until after the departure of our ship, 
and he thought my adventures need not begin quite 
so soon. Accordingly I remained on board. 

I have learned something on the journey al- 
ready, and that is, to appreciate the sallow ivory 
complexions of the South Americans; both in the 
men as in the women it seems to be infinitely more 
beautiful than the best admired pink and white to 
which one is accustomed. I noticed it particularly 
when a fresh fair complexioned man was talking 
with the olive-skinned Syrian, the fair man looked 
so pink in comparison, that one felt he had been 
skinned. 

The journey has been perfect, only one night 
was it too hot, and I had to carry Dick on deck to 
sleep. For the rest it has been cool and calm, un- 
til about two hours from Vera ruz when we ran 
into a storm. Then my beautiful jeweled sea be- 
came angry and white capped and opaque, and 
spat forth spray, but it had not long in which to 
do its worse, and at four P.M. on Monday, June 
27th, we landed. 

Tuesday, June 28, 1921. Vera Cruz. 

I find I am always justified in not fussing be- 
forehand as to the ultimate unravelling of details. 
In Russia, wherever I needed help, the necessity of 
the occasion created a friend, and so it is this time : 
The reliable American, friend of a few days only, 
144 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

could not have done more for me if I had been his 
sister. He helped me through the customs with 
my baggage, was joined by his partner, another 
reliable American who, having known me not 
more than twenty minutes, gave up his room at the 
hotel to me, because there was not another to be 
had. If ever a poet were required to sing praises 
the American man deserves his poet. 

The hotel bedroom was high, floor tiled and al- 
most empty of furniture except for two double 
beds. Long windows opened on to a balcony over- 
looking the square, full of green tropical trees and 
flowering shrubs. A great gnarled fire-tree, with 
its scarlet blossom dominated all other trees, and in 
the background was the old Spanish Cathedral, its 
dome covered with buzzard birds, and its tower 
full of bells. I could have spent hours at my win- 
dow, feasting my eyes on this scene. I had to 
share this one and only precious room with Louise 
and Dick. We had planned to stay for two nights. 
I have come to Mexico in the same frame of mind 
with which I went to Russia, prepared for every 
adventure and discomfort. At bedtime I said to 
Louise: "I suppose we ought to draw lots as to 
which sleeps with Dick, but I don't mind telling 
you that you can have him I" (I have vivid recol- 
lections of the terrible kicks administered by Dick 
all through the only night I ever spent with him!) 
Louise replied that she would bear it and we went 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to bed congratulating ourselves that we had coin- 
cided with a storm at Vera Cruz, which was less 
unpleasant than being baked alive. I had not been 
long asleep, however, when the rain leaking 
through the roof over my bed waked me, I pushed 
my bed into another part of the room. No escape, 
however, before long the entire ceiling was drip- 
ping, and there was only one small dry corner of 
the room. Into this corner I pushed Dick and 
Louise. Then, barefooted, I paddled about on the 
streaming floor, rescuing luggage and clothes. 
Finally I retired to my damp bed, wrapped in my 
rug, and with an umbrella open over my head. It 
seemed but a few minutes before the dawn broke 
and with it, awakened all the buzzards and all the 
blackbirds in the square. They shrieked, they 
whistled, they sang shrill tunes like noisy canaries. 
It was as if one had one's bed in the parrot house 
at the Zoo, and the parrot house leaked. Dick 
thoroughly awakened, got the giggles and my irri- 
tation accentuated the absurdity. What a night! 
No further sleep being possible, we dressed and 
went down to breakfast on the sidewalk under the 
arcade. Here native boys came hovering round 
with their shoe-shining paraphernalia, which is 
quite a flourishing trade. Vendors with baskets 
full of native wares, postcard sellers and news- 
paper boys; blind beggars and deformities, all 
were part of our kaleidescopic '^entourage," 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

besides the sombrero'd Mexicans of every type, 
who walked by us in the street, as spectacular as 
any passing show. 

At the neighboring and opposite tables, men 
stared glad-eyed and even signaled : one hardly 
dared to let one's eyes rest anywhere except on the 
birds in the trees! 

When the rain cleared we engaged a Ford car 
and told the driver we would start in a quarter of 
an hour; but when we were ready to start our car 
was surrounded by a crowd and a policeman ar- 
rested the driver and led him away. Another was 
substituted. My Spanish being nil, I was unable 
to ascertain what had happened. Our drive was 
rather like going across country, and for the first 
time in my life I realized the value of a Ford car. 
No other car could or would have driven through 
the ponds and streams, over the boulders and 
rocks and negotiated the bumps and ruts that we 
did! This native drove his car as though it were 
accustomed to go anywhere; in fact, there was no 
direction that one pointed to, that he was not pre- 
pared to go to, road or no road! No wonder we 
finally punctured a tire, but happily we were near 
home and so walked. At tea time the two reliable 
Americans fetched us and we went by tramway to 
the bathing beach. The waves were high and the 
sea was warm and only the Americans knew how 
to swim. Dick got wildly excited and almost 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

panic-stricken as each big wave rose up and came 
towards him. That night, my bed being soaking 
wet from the drips that had fallen all day, I threw 
off the mattress and slept soundly wrapped in my 
rug on the bare wire springs; also it was cooler. 

Wednesday, June 29, 1921. Mexico City. 

Those blighted birds in the square waked us 
again before 5 A.M., so I got up immediately, and 
we were down on the sidewalk at 5 130 having 
breakfast. Later we were joined by our Americans 
and together drove to the station for the 6:20 A.M. 
Mexican train. On arrival we were refused a 
ticket, being informed by the office that already 
more tickets had been sold than they had accom- 
modations for. We pushed by the barrier, and 
boarded the train, it was obvious we must get there 
somehow. Many of our fellow shipmates were on 
the train and kindly offered to take turns, sharing 
their seats. Heaps of people were standing. The 
compartment was like a tramcar, even with the 
luxury of a seat it was not a 15-hour journey that 
promised any comfort. As the day grew hotter, I 
found the best place was to sit on the platform of 
the last coach and dangle my feet overboard. Dick 
and Louise joined me. Three or four men stood 
up behind us and on the steps of the platform right 
and left sat armed guards, rifle in hand. Rumor 
had it that the train had been known to be at- 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

tacked by bandits in lonely places. Most of the 
time our armed guard slept, and one of them fell 
off, but run as he would he could not catch up 
the train. We climbed and climbed up through 
the mountains to a height of 10,000 feet until we 
were cloud enveloped — the train couldn't go very 
fast, and some of the youths of the party did actu- 
ally jump off and run behind. 

During the first part of our journey we passed 
through a chaotic riot of tropical vegetation. 
Everything grew everywhere, under giant trees 
were dense bushes, and on the tree trunks and 
branches grew countless other species of plant, as 
though a gardener had grafted one onto another 
in profuse experiment. There were banana, cocoa- 
nut, coffee, maize and so many new and bright- 
colored flowers that I was bewildered. There is 
not a flower or a fruit of any color or shape that 
any Futurist could invent, that does not grow in 
Mexico. We stopped at wayside stations, where 
the villages were built of grass huts and the natives 
in bright colors were like flowers among the green. 
Mexicans on bucking ponies, over which they had 
perfect control, were all part of what seemed al- 
most a stage scene. As we climbed higher, how- 
ever, the luxuriant vegetation ceased, but the ef- 
fects of sunlight and shadow as we looked down 
from the damp clouds onto the sunlit valleys be- 
low, really was grandiose. After that it became so 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

cold we were forced to return inside the coach. 
For hours we endured closed windows, over- 
crowded seats, smoking and spitting, and eventu- 
ally the smell of primitive oil lamps. Outside one 
looked for miles and hours onto plains covered 
with cactus. One's back ached and one's head was 
heavy, but no sleep was possible, and there was no- 
where to rest one's head. Dick sat on my knee, 
and was astonishingly good. I have, in fact, never 
known him so before. He seemed to realize that 
our nerves were as tense as possible. He stroked 
my cheek and said he could see by my eyes that I 
was tired, he was caressing and gentle. . . . Oh! 
those miles and miles of cactus, how one grew to 
hate them, and the Chinaman who would spit and 
the Mexican who would stare, and the baby who 
would cry, and the man who would smoke a cigar, 
and the woman who would close the last window! 
At 8:30 P.M. the lights of Mexico City pro- 
claimed our journey ended, and just in time, for 
there comes at last a moment when one's courage 
and sense of adventure just crumple and one has 
to cry. I was terribly near it, when our American 
friends came and joined us. I declare if there 
had been more room I would have laid my head 
on the shoulder of one. They were gallant to the 
end, and saw us safely installed in the Imperial 
Hotel, before saying good-bye, and then: We 
slept, we slept, we slept. . . . 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Thursday, June 30, 192 1. Mexico City. 

We awoke, very late, in a town that is wide 
avenued, full of motors, and disappointingly civil- 
ized. The civilization may be only skin deep, and 
may not extend beyond the town limits, who 
knows . . .? But for people who looked for and 
hoped for something primitive, disordered and 
tropical, to find order, dullness and coolness, is 
ridiculous. Louise and I, comparing notes as to 
our expectations and realizations, simply laugh. 
Vera Cruz wasn't very civilized, and the journey 
yesterday was as primitive as one could look for, 
but Mexico City appears to be cosmopolitan and 
up to date. In the morning, on our way back from 
shopping, we passed through a very pretty little 
garden, called "Alameda," and there a band was 
playing. "Who'd work?" said Louise, as we 
seated ourselves on comfortable chairs under an 
awning, with matting under our feet. Certainly 
the people could have worked, who preferred, like 
us, to loaf and listen! Dick sailed an improvised 
boat in a fountain pond. The man who sat oppo- 
site came and sat next to us, otherwise all was 
harmony. 

After lunch we drove to Chapultepec, a more 
beautiful or well-cared-for park I have never seen. 
It positively outdoes the Bois de Boulogne. In 
comparison with Central Park, where one is so ag- 
gressively over-guarded by men with whistles, in 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

spite of which the place is littered with paper, this 
park is as neat as a private garden. Everyone 
seems to behave with taste and decorum, and there 
seem to be no guards to keep order. One or two 
mounted police in gray and red, wearing large som- 
breros and riding gaily caparisoned ponies, added 
to the picturesqueness. We hired a boat for an 
hour and rowed on the lake, but the effort of row- 
ing made one's breath short, and one's heart did a 
variety of irregular movements. I had heard that 
the high altitude effected one this way. On a hill 
close to us stood the castle of Chapultepec, with its 
distant background of mountains. A beautiful sit- 
uation to live in, but the most unenviable of posi- 
tions. I think I would prefer almost any fate on 
earth except that of President of Mexico. Like 
the Roman Rulers, one after another, doomed to 
destruction. 

Friday, July i, 1921. Mexico. 

In the morning I delivered my letter of introduc- 
tion from Mr. Fletcher to Mr. Summerlin. In 
the afternoon I was asked to go and see him. He 
at once handed me a cable which had arrived the 
day before, and addressed to me under his care. 
It contained news that I read and re-read before 
my numbed brain could take it, — the announce- 
ment of Aunt Jennie's* death. I tried to pull my- 

*Lady Randolph Churchill — Mother of Winston Churchill. 
152 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

self together and talk of things Mexican with Mr. 
Summerlin, who was very charming to me, but 
the weight of my news was overwhelming. I 
drove out to San Angel Inn, in the country with 
Dick and we had tea in the pattio, where blue 
plumbago and magenta bougamvillia minged to- 
gether from the verandah to the roof. Dick played 
in a fountain. It was wondrously peaceful, and 
good to look at. 

I have left England to "make good" and of all 
the people I love, and who love me, and whose 
eyes have followed me across the sea, Aunt Jennie's 
were among the keenest. I would have liked to do 
my best work for her appreciation. Her praise, 
her approval, her advice, her love was something 
that counted. The loss of her, and the contempla- 
tion of years to face without ever seeing her again 
is difficult to grasp. I cannot imagine returning 
to an England that does not contain her. My sec- 
ond mother, my loyallest friend. She had the rar- 
est qualities, and the largest heart, which made her 
loveable. She was "worldly-wise," yet neither 
wise nor worldly. She loved passionately and gen- 
erously as her heart dictated, and always she gave 
out more than she received. She married three 
times, and twice in a wayward and unworldly fash- 
ion. Partly what I am today is the result of her 
early influence. I used to admire and love her in 
a rather awe-struck way when I was a child, and 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

when I was 17 I believed she could do no wrong. 
Her judgment seemed to me infallible. In those 
days we lived exactly opposite, in great Cumber- 
land Place, London, and I used to sit with her 
every morning and while she dressed I was made 
to read the leading articles in the TiMES. I was 
very shy, having ran wild for years in Ireland. 
Aunt Jennie took the raw and untamed girl, taught 
her how to do her hair; made her put on her 
clothes with care, and scolded her into a civilized 
woman. She used to say to me: "While you are 
dressing, put your mind to it, and do the best you 
can with yourself. After that, never give your 
appearance another thought." She would scold me 
unmercifully if I did not make an effort to talk to 
whatever man I sat next to at luncheon or dinner: 
"Remember you are asked, not for your amuse- 
ment, but to contribute something to the party. . . ." 
The letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son were as 
nothing compared to the worldly advice of Jennie 
Churchill to her niece. She frightened me, but I 
loved her, because I knew she was just, and I knew 
she was right. For years she took me out into the 
world and did with me the best she could. It be- 
came an accepted thing with me, that she had all 
the attention, and her admirers were kind to me on 
her account. I used to wonder whether I would 
have to wait to attain her age in order to have my 
own success. I never resented it, my admiration 




LADY RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 

(Photograph by Hoppe) 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

for her was too great, I just took for granted that 
things were so. In later years my awesome fear 
ebbed away, and we became confidential friends on 
a mature basis. I seemed after marriage to catch 
up to her, and in my widowhood we had a perfect 
understanding. There was nothing then that we 
would not tell one another and I bowed to her su- 
perior experience and judgment. Her under- 
standing, her tolerance and her love had made her 
very precious. When I returned from Russia, she 
was my loyallest friend, and championed me. My 
last evening before sailing for New York, was a re- 
union de famille at her house for dinner. After 
dinner she took me aside and talked to me inti- 
mately, and advisedly. She made me promise that 
if I did not like being in America I was to return 
at once, ''You have a loving, a loyal and a powerful 
family," she said, and hoped I was not going to be 
lonely or unhappy in a strange new world which 
she had known and left. At eight the next morn- 
ing she surprised me by being at the station to wish 
me godspeed, I was deeply touched, but saddened 
by a rather wistful look in her face. God bless her, 
she was a splendid independent woman. She dis- 
regarded public opinion, and her own was very 
strong. She was beautiful and brilliant; never 
banal, never conventional, always a great personal- 
ity. 

She wrote, as Mrs. George Cornwallis West, the 

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memories of "Lady Randolph Churchill" ... no 
one had more material, or more right to present 
it. Hurled into the midst of a political centre 
from the moment of her first marriage, she con- 
tinued to the end the friend of every Prime Min- 
ister and every Cabinet Minister; a friend of 
kings, artists, writers, musicians, a dominating 
influence and a leader of thought and taste in a 
cosmopolitan as well as English society. 

I prefer to think of her forever at rest, beautiful 
and brilliant and wonderful to the end. 

Saturday, July 2, 1921. Mexico City, 

This morning we went to see the Cathedral. It 
sounds banal enough but one must see cathedrals! 
Outside it is very beautiful and imposing, and 
forms a whole side of the square. 

It was completed in 1525 and represented the 
Mother Church of Spain. Almost on the same 
site stood the ancient Aztec Teocali of Tlaloc- 
huitzilopochtli, the great pagan sanctuary, in fact, 
the Cathedral was built to a great extent out of 
the same stones. Effacing the Cathedral from my 
mind, I visualize the great pyramidal Teocali 
with its five stories each receding above the other, 
and its flights of steps leading from terrace to ter- 
race, on the summit was the great jasper sacrificial 
stone. Before the altar stood a colossal figure of 
Huitzilopochtli, the war god and the deity. Here 

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burned the undying fires, which meant as much to 
the Aztecs as did the Vestal flame to ancient Rome. 
It is amazing to recall that as late as i486 the 
dedication of the Great Teocali was celebrated by 
human sacrifices to the extent of 20,000. One of 
the most dramatic episodes in the World's History 
must have been the battle between the soldiers led 
by Cortez and those of Montezuma, a thousand 
combatants fought on this aerial summit in full 
view of the whole city. The battle raged for three 
hours and many of the combatants here were 
hurled from the height, Cortez himself narrowly 
escaping this fate. The victorious Spaniards 
rushed at the God Huitzil, and with shouts of tri- 
umph dragged him from his niche and tumbled 
him over the edge to the horror of the onlooking 
Aztecs. Thus ended Paganism and Christianity 
was established. In the place of the great Teocali, 
the Spaniards built a Cathedral. As a substitute 
for human sacrifices, they introduced the Inquisi- 
tion. Instead of Huitzil, Christ in crude plaster, 
gaudily painted, with imitation blood, and a bevy 
of life-sized Saints and Angels, some of them 
kneeling on billows of plaster clouds, surrounded 
by bleeding hearts (imitation) and sham flowers, 
now reign supreme. This is the setting in which 
we found ourselves on entering and by chance we 
happened upon a wedding ceremony! The organ 
was abominable and the singing. All the poor 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

women with their babies had followed in after the 
bride to witness this ever appealing ceremony! 
Most of the babies were dressed in a rather bright 
crude pink, the worst possible color for a dark yel- 
low baby! Dick, who had never seen a wedding 
before, asked me in an awestruck whisper as the 
bridal party stood in a row at the top of the aisle: 
"Is she marrying the woman next to her?" 

"No, the man . . ." 

"Did you marry Daddy like that?" 

"Yes—" 

and then incredulously: "Dressed like that — ?" 

"Yes . . ." 

He sidled up to me, and then asked shyly: 

"Think you'll ever marry again?" 

"No—" 

"I'd like to see you like that, — wish I'd seen you 
marry Daddy." 

If I'd told him a second marriage isn't privileged 
to wear white, he probably would realize it wasn't 
worth doing! 

At midday I received the visit of the sister and 
niece of Mr. N. to whom I had delivered a letter 
of introduction. It is rather fun knowing real 
Mexicans and getting their point of view. I didn't 
tell them and they didn't seem to know that I had 
only met their kinsman once and I wondered what 

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they did think. In the afternoon they fetched me 
for a drive, the car was owned and driven by the 
fiance of the girl. We drove out into the country 
and were caught in the fiercest rain-storm. The 
car had only a hood and I had only a cape. One 
was frozen to the marrow. They took me to tea at 
the Reforma Club at Chapultepec, a tennis club 
organized chiefly by the English Colony. It looked 
truly English, and the cold and the damp made 
one feel as though in England. The English 
women whom I did not meet but looked at, seemed 
to be of that type that is neither interesting nor 
decorative. — One or two Mexican girls I was in- 
troduced to, as "my uncle's friend. . . ." It seems to 
me I might be explained to strangers in various 
ways, but "my uncle's friend" is a fame that is 
new to me. 

Sunday, July 3, 1921. Mexico City. 

The 4th of July was celebrated today. I sup- 
pose on account of its being Sunday. There was 
a gardenfete at a place called "Tivoli." The Presi- 
dent was supposed to come; but of course he did 
not, nor ever intended to, for as long as the U. S. 
will not recognize his government, he will not rec- 
ognize the U. S. national holiday. Mr. Summer- 
lin and Colonel Miller and all the high-hatted and 
uniformed diplomats of various nations were wait- 
ing to receive him. Instead, the press kodaks had 

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to comfort themselves with the belated but smil- 
ing Minister Pani of Foreign Affairs! With 
great ceremony they paraded round the ground 
in procession and the band played every conceiv- 
able Sousa March, I never realized how utterly 
unendurable civilized American music is . , . 
I mean, not to include the jazz and the coon 
music, which has great character and charm. But 
there are things like ''Yankee-Doodle" that just 
make one curl up. With a fictitious attempt at 
gaiety, I watched this celebration of the defeat of 
England. Dick enjoyed it, he bought bags of con- 
fetti, and realized for the first time the full joy of 
being able to throw handf ulls of something straight 
in a person's face. It was a lovely game. 

Monday, July 4, 192 1. Mexico City. 

My Mexican acquaintances, mother and daugh- 
ter, took me to tea with some friends of theirs, who 
lived in a really lovely house, almost palatial. The 
daughter of the house was intelligent and spoke 
perfect English. I had a long talk with her and 
learnt something of the Mexican aristocracy's 
view point: She said that decent and honest peo- 
ple in Mexico try to keep out of politics, and not to 
meet the politicians or the Generals. Otherwise 
they are persecuted by whatever Government fol- 
lows for having even been friends with the Gov- 
ernment that has been overthrown. The politicians 
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of whatever regime have always been self-inter- 
ested. Their object is to make as much as they can 
while their Government lasts. Against this there 
is no remedy. If the President tried to enforce 
rigorous measures against graft, etc., he would be 
turned upon and rent asunder. Referring to Gen- 
eral Obregon, she said he was pretty well acknowl- 
edged by every one to be honest and purposeful, 
the best out of 15,000,000 people, but "thieves" as 
she expressed it helped him to become President, 
and he dare not get rid of them for that reason, "I 
suppose he is in honor bound to stand by them," 
I said — "Not at all." She contradicted, "but if he 
dismisses them they would plot against him. . . . 
His only way is to kill them." (I felt I was prob- 
ing this skin-deep civilization!!). 

Everyone seems to live in great uncertainty. "In 
the Revolution" (I did not understand which of 
the many!) people's houses and farms and motors, 
etc., were taken away from them. A few of them 
have been inadequately paid for since, and some 
farms have been returned to their owners, but in 
such a dilapidated condition as to make them al- 
most hopeless. 

"If anything happened to General Obregon, 
things would be far worse . . . there would be 
chaos. ..." I was told. A Revolution is impos- 
sible unless the Indians are with it. They are very 
easily led, and always side with the richest Gen- 

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eral. I was told a good deal more, but it repre- 
sented the average bourgeois point of view, — so 
ready to criticize, so inaccurate in its details. 

Tuesday, July 5, 1921. Mexico City. 

Today is Review day. It happens once a month. 
First the Firemen with a band marched down the 
Passo de La Reforma, past our Hotel. Then some 
soldiers and finally quantitiesi of police. They 
were all smartened up, clean and white-spatted 
for the occasion. I rushed forward to photograph 
them, which seemed to amuse them, and one officer 
on horseback purposely made his horse rear for 
my benefit. People in the street seemed not to take 
the slightest interest, only a few loafers or foreign- 
ers looked on, and the usual crowd of women fruit 
sellers, who sold pulque (the national drink, made 
from the juice of cactus) to the men when they 
halted. The streets are conspicuous at all times 
by their absence of well dressed or prosperous 
looking people. Except for some business men, 
the people look nearly as dilapidated as those in 
Moscow. The shop windows contain the ugliest 
clothes. I wonder what the Mexican woman does 
when she wants a new dress. 

This afternoon, Dick not being well enough to 
walk, we drove to Chapultepec Park. By lucky 
chance the driver spoke English. He told us we 
could see parts of the Castle, and drove us up to the 
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Hill summit. We wandered around rather stu- 
pidly, there was no guide, and rumor has it that 
one can only see the Castle if one has a special let- 
ter from one's consul. Presently two young men ap- 
peared, officials apparently, and they watched us 
and seemed to take an interest. Of course, in the 
end, although they could speak nothing but Span- 
ish, we were carrying on some kind of understand- 
ing. They took us from terrace to terrace, higher 
and higher, until finally we were in a fountained 
flower garden on the roof. They gathered bunches 
of roses and carnations, pansies and violets for us, 
insisted on photographing us with our own kodaks 
and finally took us up the spiral stairs to the top- 
most tower, where the view of the town below and 
the plain and the mountains all round us was stag- , 
gering. They smiled with satisfaction at our de- 
light. On the way down we were shown some rooms 
and here our incoherent friends linked us on to a 
guide, who was showing some Americans over the 
Castle. I hear that Obregon prefers to live in a 
cottage adjoining, and small wonder: The Castle 
inside is as ugly as it is possible to be. The Chinese 
room, presented by the Chinese Emperor to Presi- 
dent Diaz, is terrible. Only one bed room, I think 
it was Maximilian's Queen's, had some quite nice 
"Bulle" wardrobes. Pointed out as of special 
interest was a sitting room, all done up in pink: 
"For Miss Root. ..." I am ashamed of my ignor- 

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ance in not knowing anything about this lady or 
her part in Mexican History, 

I really felt speechless over the ugliness of the 
interior. There is nothing to recommend Chapul- 
tepec Castle except its position and its view. The 
imitation Pompeian decoration on the terrace walls 
are as bad as the "Mexican Work" which decorates 
the banquet room. The entrance gates, with bronze 
soldiers on the pillars are enough to warn one of 
what is in store, where decoration is concerned. 
However, it was well worth the time to see the 
view and we spent a charming afternoon, thanks 
to our unknown friends. In the evening I was 
discovered by the Press ! Interviewers and photog- 
raphers recalled early days in New York. But I 
mean to leave Mexico City — climate means more 
to me than anything else in the World. I cannot 
feel lonelv or ill if I am in a place of flowers and 
sun. Such places exist quite near, we are wasting 
our precious days in the cold grayness of Mexico 
City. We came with only tropical clothes and it 
is the rainy season ! I want to go away. I am only 
waiting for Dick to get well. 

Wednesday, July 6, 1921. Mexico City. 

At 10 A.M. we went to Guadalupe by tram car. 
It took about twenty minutes. The Church, an- 
other of those magnificent edifices erected by the 
Spaniards, dates back to the i6th Century, and 
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was in fact built about ten years after the Conquest 
of Mexico. This ''Shrine of the Virgin" is the 
"Mecca" of the Mexicans. It is the centre every 
year of great festivals, and is supposed to be en- 
dowed with miraculous powers. The superstitious 
Indian regards this divine Virgin as a manifesta- 
tion of the primitive "diosa" (Goddess) they 
once worshipped, and on December 12th of every 
year they celebrate their "Fiesta" in their own way, 
unhampered by priests. At the big entrance door, 
as I went in, a beggar was sitting. He looked like 
a sculptured "Goya" carved in walnut wood. Ema- 
ciated, old, expressionless, immovable with an out- 
stretched wizened hand and a bandage round his 
brow, he looked the picture of passive misery. I 
photographed him. Outside the Church was a 
whole encampment of natives selling the usual 
cheap rosaries, medals and holy cakes, called "Gon- 
dites of the Virgin" (Little fat ones of the Virgin) . 
We were the only tourists and the whole town 
seemed to be under canvas, selling fruits, knick- 
knacks and pottery — There seemed to be a world of 
sellers and nobody buying. 

The Chapel of the Well is another building that 
can rival any in Latin Europe. It is exquisite with 
its domes of blue and yellow tiles. But we should 
have come here on a fiesta or a Sunday and seen 
the fervent Indian crowds. On an ordinary day 
there is not much movement. 

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Thursday, July 7, 1921. Mexico City. 

A lovely sunshiny morning (one has learned to 
appreciate that!), and we boarded a tram at the 
Zocolo and went to Zochimilco. It took an hour. 
We went as fast as a train across long straight 
stretches of plain. A big barefooted Indian in- 
sisted on talking to me, rapidly and at great length, 
in spite of my repeated *'non entiendo." Perhaps 
he thought I was only pretending not to under- 
stand, which is true, for I gathered he belonged to 
Zochimilco, owned a boat on the "lago" and 
wished to be our cicerone! As I knew nothing 
about him and dislike persistency, I turned a cold 
shoulder upon him. 

Our tram took us across the plain and close up 
to the mountain feet. Arrived at the region of 
lakes and floating islands and with no one to turn 
to for information, the only strangers among a 
world of Indians, I humbly followed the persistent 
guide. He had an ugly but kindly face, and such 
a clean white smock that it gave us confidence in 
him. We followed him for some way along a nar- 
row cobbled way, where wide eyed Indian girls 
wrapped around in blue shawls, looked at us curi- 
ously. After awhile I stopped dead, and intimated 
that I wanted to find the lakes. Our guide looked 
hurt, even uglier for a moment, and I understood 
him to assure us he was "secure" — and that we 
need have no anxiety. A blind man, young, bare- 
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legged, his head held high as all blind men do, 
came tapping after us with his stick. They always 
give me the creeps. I want to run in a panic, 
when I hear the tap-tap. He stopped when the 
church bell sounded and taking his hat off, he re- 
cited rapid prayers. I wonder if he was very 
philosophical about his blindness, or what his 
mental attitude could be towards his God. At this 
juncture however, we arrived at a canal, and our 
guide led us through a door-way into the court- 
yard of a house by the water side. Around the 
fountain some women were cleaning meat. I pre- 
pared my kodak, but everyone melted away, and an 
old grey-haired hag shrieked at me! A big man 
loomed into the background. He looked half-bred, 
rather negroid, and had a severe questioning ex- 
pression. I made a bolt for the boat! This was 
a species of punt, with poles garlanded, and an 
awning overhead, made of a faded Mexican flag. 
It was crude and picturesque. In a moment we 
were under way and being punted noiselessly, 
along the canal which joins the lakes. The small 
poplar-like trees that were reflected avenues in the 
water, reminded me of Holland. The islands were 
all luxuriant with flowers, there seemed to be acres 
of carnations, mixed with pansies and chrysanthe- 
mums. In the water grew a lovely "aquatic lily," 
as our guide called it. I have never seen one like 
it. The flower was mauve and like a small rhodo- 

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dendron. There were yellow water lilies as well, 
and arum lilies on the water's edge. As we passed 
under a weeping willow, an irridescent humming 
bird flew out. I had never dreamed of seing one 
outside of the Natural History Museum. The 
vision of it crowned my day. 

I lay lazily on the slanting prow of the punt, the 
sun burnt down on my back, and I wondered 
whether one would be content to live all one's days 
in a boat drifting along somnolently in the sun. 
Dick more active, with an improvised paddle, 
thought he was making the boat go. Narrow 
canoes slipped past us, full to the brim with scar- 
let carnations. Our guide proved to be efficient 
and friendly. He took us to a restaurant on an 
island, where we had an unedible luncheon, which 
we shared with about eight famished dogs. Our 
table was under an arbor on a bridge at the junc- 
tion of three streams. Nearby we landed, and 
were shown an electric plant which never interests 
me, and a garden that was enchanting but more 
Dutch than ever. Trees were clipped into bird 
shapes, and some climbing monkeys. The place 
was dense with strange sad looking Indians, who 
were digging out a canal. We lingered on the lakes 
until nearly four o'clock, and then our guide, de- 
voted to the end, insisted we should visit the village 
church. The doors were wide open, but from the 
brilliant sun outside ones eyes had to accustom 
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themselves to the dimness within. There were a 
few Indian women kneeling on the wooden floor, 
and some sort of chant was going on. One woman 
was intoning in a shrill flat metallic voice. The 
crudest painted figures of the Christ dressed in 
white muslin "shorts" edged with lace; face and 
body covered with blood; hair black and matted: 
legs emaciated and contorted, stared out at us from 
every corner. Dick suddenly exclaimed in a terri- 
fied whisper "I must go — I've got to go — " and 
made for the sunlight at full speed with resonant 
steps. I followed him, and out in the court yard 
was a rickety Crucifix with human legbones tied 
crossways on it. Louise commented, and Dick 
quick to overhear, asked : "Are they real bones . . .? 
What is a Crucifix? What is it for . . .? Why . . .? 
Tell me about Christ, please tell me, tell me about 
Christ," and as we waited on a seat in the Public 
Garden, for the tramway, Dick insisted upon hear- 
ing the whole story of Christ. He says his prayers 
to God, and the two have no connection in his 
mind. And now I realize what Dick's first and 
earliest impression of Christ will be, it is indeli- 
ble, . . . 

Sunday, July io, 1921. — Mexico City. 

I have at last found a friend. She is an Eng- 
lish woman, married to a Mexican. I met her in 
England, but never realized she lived in Mexico. 

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Great was my surprise and pleasure, when she 
made a sign of life to me. Through her I have 
come in touch with the English and American 
Colony. They are very nice to me, and anxious 
to help me to see all there is to see. My Anglo- 
Mexican friends had a picnic lunch for me today, 
at their place in Tocubaya just outside the City. 
It is called "The Molino" and is the oldest mill in 
America, North or South. They hold the titles 
of the estate from the first Viceroy. 

Now they no longer live there. The house is de- 
serted and unfurnished, the chapel bereft of its 
old carved pews. The granaries are empty, one is 
a hollow shell, the result of a fire. Only in the 
garden are there signs of renaissance. This is the 
result of Revolution. Two thousand men and 1500 
horses were billeted there for five months, at the 
time when Obregon came into power. From all 
descriptions, they destroyed everything and took 
what they did not destroy. The trees were cut 
down. Even the Church pews were stacked onto 
a cart and left when the soldiers left. "The best 
Obusson Chair" in which the Colonel used to sit, 
and to which he had become attached was piled 
onto the top of the coke cart! Listening to all this, 
I felt I might be hearing the complaint of people 
against the Bolsheviks! It is a point of view that 
I do not often hear, and it interests me as all points 
of view do. For awhile my sympathy was with 
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these landowners. Their suffering sounded so 
futile and this form of destruction helps none. The 
working man does not gain by it. Nothing is 
arrived at except an unrest, a lack of confidence, 
an apprehension for the future, and a resignation 
of despair on the part of property owners. Some 
one gains : Presumably the individual who loots. 
— I asked, "What was your ambition and your 
aim, before all this happened . . . ?" and the an- 
swer was : "The ambition of every decent Mexican, 
to make a lot of money and go and live abroad." 
Precisely what the Russian bourgeois did. And 
how, I asked, does Mexico expect to put her house 
in order, if the ambition of every decent Mexican 
is to live outside his country . . . ? 

The Conways were among those invited to this 
rather sumptous picnic, which was served elabor- 
ately under the pergola in the garden. The Con- 
ways are English and he is at the head of the elec- 
tric light and tramway company. The workshops 
have been on strike for sometime, and now the 
tramway personnel threaten to come out in sym- 
pathy, on Thursday next. Yesterday there was a 
demonstration of tramway workers, and they de- 
posited a red flag on Mr. Conway's doorstep! The 
situation is an anxious one, and keeps him over- 
worked. He arrived late for lunch from a Gov- 
ernment conference, and had to leave again almost 
immediately after. 

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While the rest of the party played poker, I 
rocked in a perfectly good hammock, and Dick 
sailed his boat in a 23 ft. deep swimming tank. 
The sun came out fitfully, and the day was cold. 

The weather I am assured is "unusual" . . . On 
the way home we passed a trolley car full of men. 
It was at a standstill and there seemed to be a 
good-humored dispute going on, between one of 
the men in the trolley and another who was at- 
tempting to board it. The man in the trolley 
threatened the other by brandishing an iron bar. 
The other disregarding him continued his efforts 
to climb. With a resounding blow, which we 
could hear above the sound of our motor, the iron 
bar smote the man on the temple, so that he 
dropped, stunned to the ground. A woman 
screamed and ran to pick him up. But he picked 
himself up, and two small rocks at the same time. 
Our car turned a corner, and the sequel was lost 
to view. 

"They hold life very lightly," Mrs. Conway said 
with indifference. She has lived here for some 
years. 

Wednesday, July 13, 1921. 

Mrs. Conway fetched me in the morning and 
we went to the National Museum. I was in search 
of the War God Huitzil, the one that Cortez threw 
down from the height of the Teocali after the great 
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fight. Mr. Terry's guide book says it is in the 
Museum, but I could find it nowhere. Upon in- 
quiry one person said it was in a Convent, another 
that it was built into the walls of the Cathedral, a 
third that it was among the foundations of the Na- 
tional Palace! But if I failed in discovering my 
god, the accumulation of Gods and of sculptured 
stone contained in that small gallery in the Na- 
tional Museum was a revelation. The moment I 
walked in I was amazed. This is work that rivets 
one's attention. The people who created these 
things have the right to a very important place in 
art. The Aztec calendar stone one knows well, it 
has been so often reproduced, but the reliefs on the 
sacrificial stones, are equally wonderful, — almost 
pure Assyrian in feeling. 

The great flat screenlike stone, representing the 
goddess of the Moon, is full of design, beauty and 
terror. They demanded much, these Gods, and I 
imagine they were served more out of fear than of 
love. Their's was a jealous god, and a god of 
vengeance. There was Chauticalli, the crouching 
tiger, demanding the votive offering of human 
hearts, for which he carries a cup sunk in his own 
back. 

Of all the gods, Chac-Mosl, the Lord of Life, 
brought from Yucatan, is the one that is least 
barbaric. Almost it might be the work of a modern 
archaic sculptor. But through everything there 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

runs a note of deep tragedy, of awful distress. The 
people who worshipped Soxhipili, the Goddess 
of Spring and Flowers, who lifts up a pained 
and tearstained face to heaven, — are the same peo- 
ple who today worship the bloodstained painted 
plaster figure of Christ. They are still idolators, 
but they call it Christ today, and their souls react 
to all the pain, and all the blood, and all the hor- 
ror, that centuries ago was carved in stone, and 
stained with the blood of human hearts. Going to 
that Museum, seeing, even without understand- 
ing, has opened up to me a whole new interest in 
the Mexican people. Not lightly can the world 
dismiss as brigands descendants of a civilization 
that produced such sculpture. What was this civili- 
zation? The America of the United States has no 
such ancestry, no such relics. 

And who are these people of today, called Mexi- 
can Indians, whose great dignity and impassivity 
and melancholy remind one of the Russian peas- 
ant? Is it explained in either case by centuries of 
oppression? Perhaps I will understand a little 
later on, but at present I am lost in the mysticism 
of it. 

At six o'clock, Madame Malbran, the wife of 
the Argentine Minister and Madame de Bonilla, 
took me to a reception given by the Pani's. He is 
the Minister for Foreign Affairs. After my morn- 
ing spent with the gods, and the atmosphere of 

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Aztec culture, it was a strange contrast to go to 
this centre of political modernism. The party 
might have been in Paris or Rome. It was a per- 
fectly cosmopolitan gathering, and one heard every 
language around one. To the accompaniment of 
a jazz-band we danced in two big empty rooms, 
the walls of which were covered with pictures. I 
had already heard a good deal of discussion and 
comment about Alberto Pani's collection of Old 
Masters, but whatever people may say, and what- 
ever they may be, they are extremely attractive pic- 
tures collected by some one with a cultured eye. 
Here I met a very charming cosmopolitan Mexican 
called the Marquis de Guadalupe. He had other 
names, but they were beyond my intelligence. Gua- 
dalupe, I can remember because I've been to the 
Cathdral of . . . .! He talked like an Englishman 
and said he had been educated at Stonyhurst. He 
asked me if I had seen any Mexican sports, — one 
of which is called "Haripego" ... he told me he 
did it himself and described it to me: As far as I 
could make out wild Mexicans on wild horses pur- 
sue a wild bull, catch it by the tail, and throw it! 
My informant w^ith sleek grey hair, and immacu- 
lately civilized clothes, looked like anything but 
a wild Mexican. He assured me he was one, how- 
ever, in everything but appearance. He then went 
up to Pani and asked if they could get up a show 
for me. There was some discussion in Spanish, 

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there was nothing to do, I understood, but to buy 
"a few wild horses and some bulls" . . . that's all 
. . .! and Pani, turning to me, said I had "but to 
command!" So I commanded with all possible en- 
treaty and was promised that it should be arranged 
as soon as possible for next week. I also expressed 
a wish to climb up Popocatapetl, and Pani invited 
me to lunch on Saturday to meet someone who will 
make it possible for me. Thus encouraged I rushed 
back to the Hotel to find Mrs. Conway with an 
American from Monterey, waiting to take me out 
to dinner. Afterwards we went and watched a 
game of Peloto — . This is the Spanish name for 
"ball" — It was a wonderful game, a species of 
squash rackets. The players wear long narrow 
basket sheafs in which they miraculously catch the 
ball, hardly ever missing it. A miss counts a 
score for the opponent. The curious scoop shape 
of the basket (I thought for the first moment that 
they were hollowed elephant tusks!) enables them 
to hurl the ball from a great distance and with 
great force. It is extremely beautiful to watch and 
is the fastest ball game in the world. All the while 
a tremendous lot of betting goes on, and the bookies 
in their red caps make a maddening din shouting 
the odds. The onlookers, who are more gamblers 
than sportsmen, are full of denunciatory exclama- 
tions over bad play and seldom, if ever, apprecia- 
tive of any particular good stroke. Played with- 
176 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

out any professional betting it would be a very 
sporting game, as well as a very highly scientific 
one. 

Friday, July 15, 1921. Mexico City. 

Mr. Conway having last night at midnight set- 
tled his tramway strike to his satisfaction, we 
started off at 9 A.M. in his car, with a friend of 
his and made for the Pyramids of San Juan Teoti- 
huacan. It was very cold at the start and by the 
time we got to San Cristobal the sun was out and 
we stopped to photograph the monument to Mo- 
relos, the Mexican revolutionary patriot. He is 
buried here, opposite his house. The monument, 
which is thoroughly modern, simple and forceful, 
resembles some of the new Russian revolutionary 
sculpture. Further on we stopped again and looked 
at a church. It stands alone in a wind-swept plain 
which had once been flooded. The floods had 
raised the earth about twelve feet above the orig- 
inal surface, so the carvings of the beautiful arch- 
way were low down on the ground instead of being 
high up. It had been an old Monastery, and the 
cloisters had just recently been excavated. It is 
amazing the way one comes upon a perfect gem 
of Spanish Renaissance architecture, in the wilds 
among fields of cactus. Sometimes there is not 
even a village in the vicinity. The inside of the 

177 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

church, with its rather Moorish vaulted roof and 
its Italian frescoed walls would have been very 
lovely, but for the usual additions that characterize 
either the Spanish or the Mexican Romanism, 
of which I have already complained. The one il- 
lumination to this gloom was the quantities of 
song birds inside the church that flew about the 
roof and among the altars, fanning the noses of the 
melancholy Saints, whilst their songs reverberated 
through the echoing building. Outside the door, 
an iridescent humming-bird was sucking honey 
from a wild flower. Among the loose stones of the 
old cemetery wall, we picked up a small terra-cotta 
Aztec head of an ape. Beyond this place we got 
hopelessly lost for some time and wandered 
through villages of which the roads seemed all 
alike. These villages are built of adobe or mud 
bricks, and the houses are square, flat roofed and 
windowless. They probably have been this way 
ever since Aztec times. The people we saw were 
pure Indian, without any drop of Spanish blood. 
There seems to be a great deal of lameness and 
blindness, especially the latter, owing to the preval- 
ence of disease among the parents. Infant mor- 
tality in Mexico, is, I am told on reliable authority, 
higher than that of any other country in the 
world. But to continue . . . our lost way was ex- 
tremely interesting. Sometimes our road lay 
hemmed in on either side by high impenetrable 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

hedges, formed by the organ cactus, which the In- 
dians plant to wall in their gardens or farm yards. 
Hardly any of the road was road at all, it was 
either rocl^ or stream, on a tract among the plan- 
tations of the pulque cactus. The car was an 8- 
cylinder Cadillac. It seemed to take anything com- 
petently and uncomplainingly. Never have I seen 
an owner so fatalistic, or a driver so calm under 
adversity. I felt we must turn over sometimes, but 
we did not, nor did we stick in the mud, nor did 
the streams drown the machine, nor did the springs 
break, nor did we puncture! When Mr. Conway 
pointed in a direction and said to the chauffeur: 
"That is where we want to go . . ." we went quite 
regardless of whether there was a road or not. "Is 
that a road?" I asked once or twice, and was told it 
was! When nearly at our destination, and having 
taken three hours instead of two, we had a final 
delay: In a lane we met three galloping soldiers, 
who signalled to us to stop. We were made to draw 
up onto the grassy roadside and there we stood for 
half an hour, while at least eighteen, if not twenty, 
guns went by, drawn by their mule teams of six 
each. It was very picturesque, the men riding the 
teams shouted and urged and beat their mules, 
trumpeters galloped bv, officers stood escort by our 
car while thev oast. The soldiers were dressed in 
coarse white Im'^n uniforms, and white legj^ings 
and hats, with red cord and tassels on their shoul- 

179 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ders. They looked rather dilapidated individual- 
ly, but very picturesque collectively. I did not dare 
photograph them, as it might have been a troop 
movement. The papers this morning are full of 
the insurrection of the troops under Gen. Herrera 
near Tampico in the state of Vera Cruz, Huasteca 
District, and there seems to be something in the 
air . . . who know^s, trouble again perhaps? But 
no one troubles. 

At last we arrived in the wonderful valley. It 
seemed completely deserted except for the work- 
men who are digging the excavations, and some 
big eyed barefooted silent children who watched 
us. Instantly on arrival we climbed up to the top 
of the pyramid of the Sun. Its base measurement 
is said to be that of the Pyramids of Egypt, but it 
is not so high, nor so pointed. It has been flattened 
out on the top, for the sacrifices. The human 
bodies, after their hearts were cut out, were simply 
thrown over the edge, and there are supposed to 
have been men stationed on each platform below, 
to pitchfork them on and over down to the next 
until finally at the bottom, they were collected by 
those to whom they proudly belonged, and taken 
away, ... it having been a great honor to be 
sacrificed. 

The view from the summit was awesome. Great 
mountain peaks dwarfed us, and a little way be- 
yond stood the pyramid of the Moon, and the 
1 80 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

"Road of the Dead" with its small sentinel Teocalis 
all along the way, leading from the "Moon" past 
us, to the distant so-called Citadel. We lunched 
nearby in a great natural cave, which had long 
zigzagging steps that led down into it, and made 
one feel rather theatrical and Ali-Babaish! After 
luncheon we went to this "Citadel," where the new 
excavations and restorations are taking place. No 
one is allowed to go near it, and little is known 
about it as yet. The discoveries are going on apace, 
and promise to be among the most dramatically in- 
teresting in the American Continent. I suppose 
some day the world will awaken to the wonders 
here, and will give it their attention instead of con- 
stantly re-treading the well worn paths of archeo- 
logical Europe and Egypt. 

Sheltered, hidden, protected behind an Aztec 
Teocali, there has just been revealed another of 
infinitely earlier date of which little, if anything, is 
IS yet surmised. To date, four tiers of sculptured 
walls have been unearthed and in between these 
terraces straight up from the base to the as yet un- 
covered summit, are wide steep stone steps, the 
side slopes of which are punctuated by enormous 
dragon heads. These same heads, slightly varied, 
stood out from the wall of the four terraces, one 
above the other, from a low relief background. 
The eyes of the great stone dragon-heads are set 
with obsidion, a black volcanic glass which the 

i8i 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

district produces. There are signs of color on 
these sculptures. The whole thing is barbaric, and 
overwhelmingly effective. It suggested to my mind 
something very definitely Chinese. It was a great 
privilege to be able to see this new discovery and 
to be allowed to take photographs. We were told 
by an official to whom Mr. Conway gave his name, 
that we might climb anywhere, and take what 
photographs we pleased. This, after our first re- 
ception by an officious but dutiful underling, who 
forbade us to do anything we wanted to do, was 
a heaven sent relief! 

Around us in a gigantic square, walls, and steps 
and Teocalis were being restored. The centre may 
prove to have been a gigantic arena, that was what 
the space and its shape suggested to me, but all 
conjecture in this place is futile. No one knows 
... it is no good asking or seeking or imagining. It 
is the great mystery of the World's History. Per- 
haps if the fanatical first Spanish Viceroy had not 
burnt all the Indian records something might be 
known. As it is, unless something is revealed, we 
shall continue in ignorance. A little feeling of 
pride came over me, as I viewed these monuments 
from the top of the Teocali, and realized that 
sculpture had survived where painting, and life, 
and race, and history and tradition even had faded 
away. Almost one might dare to say that sculpture 
that is monumental is immortal. 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Saturday, July i6, 1921. Mexico City. 

Alberto Pani gave a luncheon for me, which 
proved unexpectedly pleasant. We were three 
women and seven men, among whom was Jose Vas- 
conselos, the Rector of the University, a very bril- 
liant man for whom the Government has created a 
portfolio; Enciso, the Guardian of Ancient Build- 
ings ; Martinez, the head of the Academia of Belles 
Artes, Mantenegro, a painter of great distinction. 
I sat between my host, whom I find understanding 
and easy to talk to and on my other side a man 
called Dr. Atl. His name isn't really Atl at all, 
but as he is called that and was introduced to me 
under that name he may as well remain Atl. He 
is the man who was especially asked to meet me, 
to tell me about Popocatapetl. He has been up to 
the crater a great many times. In fact the love and 
the obsession of his life is said to be the great White 
Mountain! He was explained to me as being a 
painter, a poet, a Bolshevik, a Bohemian. . . . He 
certainly has individuality, and was not a bit sur- 
prised when I told him he was a Russian type, and 
that in fact he talks French as the Russians I have 
known talked it. He knew it, but denied any Rus- 
sian blood. . . . Anyway to my great delight, he 
says it is perfectly possible to do the ascent at this, 
the rainy season. So many people have been tell- 
ing me that it was an impossibility! He promises 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to take me next week.* With my host I had an 
interesting talk, about things here, as well as in 
Russia. He asked me what my impression was of 
Lenin, and I told him. . . . We discussed opinions 
very openly, and at the end of it I asked him, 
laughingly: ''Am I a Bolshevik . . .?" and he said 
"No, — you are une femme intelligente, with good 
judgment!" Above all we talked about Mexico 
and I think he was pleased by my enthusiasm and 
my interest. I amused them all, by telling them 
(to illustrate the prevailing ignorance of Mexico) 
that my "in-laws" had had a conference on the 
matter of my having dared to risk Dick's life by 
bringing him to Mexico, as a result of which they 
had decided that on my return to England, Dick 
should be removed from my custody. An excellent 
reason, as they pointed out, for not returning to 
England, but remaining in Mexico! "All the 
same," Pani admitted, "we have had terrible times 
here, when really one only went out at the risk of 
one's life, and the outside world hears only of our 
upheavals." He said laughingly that Popocatapetl 
was very emblematical of Mexico. . . . "We are a 
volcanic country, ready at any moment to erupt." 
I like their sense of humor about themselves. When 
I said I wanted to meet General Villa, they all 



♦Popocatapetl, simultaneously with my plans, went into erup- 
tion so I never achieved the ascent. 



184 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

laughed, and said "Well, if you want to meet Mex- 
ican Generals, your time will be well taken up, 
there are about six thousand of them!" 

Sunday, July 17, 1921. Mexico City. 

Spent the day with Mr. Niven at Atcapazalco 
about half an hour out by tram, and a couple of 
miles from the tramway. It was real "wilds" with 
here and there an Indian village. Mr. Niven 
works indefatigably. All during the week his 
workmen prepare the ground for him and dig the 
trenches, and on Sundays he comes out himself, 
with a small pickaxe and goes over the ground. He 
has done this for twenty-seven years, and a great 
many things in the National Museum are of his 
discovery and presentation. There are three civili- 
zations buried in layers, and because nothing is 
known of them, they are called the Aztec (three 
feet below the ground), the pre-Aztec and the 
primitives. The principal and most valuable of 
the layers is the middle one. Unfortunately, ours 
was not as productive a Sunday as it should have 
been, for Mr. Niven allowed a Mrs. Gould to turn 
Saturday into Sunday and she had all the benefit of 
the week's digging, and unearthed a little Xochip- 
ili (The Goddess of Spring and Flowers). Never- 
theless the soil yielded up innumerable little terra- 
cotta heads of Egyptian design, and incense burn- 
ers, and obsidion knives. At the last, he came upon 

185 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the wall of a building, it was an outer wall, and 
he had great hopes of what it might contain, but 
the hour was then late, and a thunder storm threat- 
ening and we had to abandon the pursuit. One 
learns patience at this job. 

I 
Tuesday, July 19, 192 1. Mexico City. 

The National Museum is only open in the morn- 
ing, but Mr, Niven and Professor (of Archae- 
ology) Mena, opened it for me, and spent the 
afternoon explaining things to me. It is a place 
in which one might spend to advantage every day 
for two months. It contains a wealth of revela- 
tion. Even the countries that contain Mexican col- 
lections can have no idea of Mexican primitive 
culture. One must see the collection in this 
Museum. 

I had just been given a small jade god, which 
I recognized at once as being infinitely old and 
beautiful. Professor Mena knew all about it at 
once. It is a "stone of virtue" (Piedra Divertua) 
and belongs to the Mixteca civilization, two thou- 
sand years ago. It is beautifully carved and I love 
it dearly. (Had it a small pointed beard, it would 
look like Trotzky!) I did not exaggerate the im- 
pression of my former superficial visit to the Mu- 
seum. If I was struck by it then, I was over- 
whelmed by it today. The more one looks the 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

more one discovers of beauty. The best things are 
masterpieces, and two or three of the reliefs are as 
beautiful and as well carved and drawn, as any of 
the most famous works of art in the world. I say 
this with perfect confidence. Egyptian and As- 
syrian influence with classic Greek designs and a 
tremendous suggestion of Chinese, makes one per- 
fectly bewildered as to origin and tradition. Up- 
stairs among the smaller things there were objects 
of such finished beauty that I was silenced even as 
to expression of appreciation. I wonder if I am an 
unusually ignorant person, or whether I have made 
a great discovery. I am under the impression that 
the world in general does not know much about 
things Mexican. 

Sometimes, I am afraid to trust my own judg- 
ment, . . . since I discovered Shakespeare. It was 
long after my maturity, and I happened to chance 
upon "Midsummer Night's Dream." I could not 
put it down until T had finished it, and then, so 
thrilled was I, that I rushed to my family and told 
them all about it. Perhaps my discovery of Mexico 
is another of the world's Shakespeares, which 
everyone already knows about except me. But so 
enthused am I, and delighted, that I would like to 
take Mexico to England, or else bring England to 
Mexico. . . . When I find something interesting I 
want to share it. . . . Russia was a thing to live, this 
is a thing to see. Not many of my friends would 

187 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

have cared to live as I loved living, in Russia. But 
heaps of people would appreciate the things that 
are beautiful to see here in Mexico. 

No news from Dr. Atl about Popocatapetl but 
rumor says it is in eruption. Message through 
Mr. Malbran, the Argentine Minister, from Presi- 
dent Obregon, inviting me to Chapultepec Castle 
Sunday night at 9:00 P.M. Message from Mr. de 
la Huerta, the Minister of Finance, saying that he 
has heard and read of the mondaine society by 
whom I am being entertained, and that he sug- 
gests that in three days, if I am tired of these peo- 
ple, I go to see him and he will show me "the other 
side of Mexico" . . . invitation definite for Mon- 
day afternoon next. 

Sunday, July 24, 1921. Mexico City. 

Mr. Conway fetched me and Dick in his car at 
9:00 A.M. and we drove out to Tipositlan. It is 
about 40 kilometers away. It had been raining 
all night and the roads were desperately slippery. 
We had to climb up a small mountain and the road 
was not really a road, but a muddy torrent. The 
car stuck. Dick delighted, he got out and climbed 
the mountain side and picked wild flowers. To 
my surprise it did in time get out of the mire and 
we climbed to the top, closely followed by a huge 
motor-lorry. When we had descended the hill on 
the other side onto the flat road, the lorry tried to 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

race us, with the result that the driver was very 
nearly jolted off the seat and the man next to the 
driver did actually fall off! Such is the condition 
of the roads just outside the city area. 

Arrived finally at Tepositlan we rambled all 
over the church, the convent and the patios. It 
used to be a Jesuit Monastery; they were planted 
there in order to educate and influence the Indian 
children. They have within the last few years 
been expelled, leaving behind them a really beau- 
tiful monument of church art. I have not seen 
anything more beautiful in Italy. The facade of 
the church, the carvings, the towers and domes, 
the surrounding wall, the avenue of cypress, the 
gnarled olive trees, complete an exquisite exterior. 
Within there is a church that is gold! Gold! Gold! 
but the gold is on carved wood and the gold is old 
gold, so that what must have once been dazzling 
and vulgar, is now mellow and beautiful. Then 
there are little inner chapels that are gems of 
beauty, and a patio, sun-bathed, and full of orange 
trees in fruit, cloister surrounded. The whole thing 
was an endless labyrinth of real beauty. 

We retired to the garden of Don Trinidad, a 
picturesque farmer, who set a table for us to lunch 
under the largest fig tree I have ever seen, our 
dessert being overhead, reachable by standing on a 
chair! Always wherever one looks, whether in 
town or in country, there is the background of 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

mountain ranges that meets the eye. After lunch 
we climbed to the topmost belfry. 

I got home just in time to have a short rest, and 
then Mr. Malbran fetched me in his car and took 
me to Chapultepec Castle, which, by the way, is 
much prettier at night, lit up. We drove straight 
up to the front door, — no sentries attempted to 
stop us. It was like a deserted country house, and 
even with the front door wide open, there was no 
one about, and Mr. Malbran had to walk outside, 
to a guard or someone, and request that our arrival 
be announced. We waited for about ten minutes in 
a small Council Chamber on the right of the en- 
trance, and then voices were heard. Mr. Malbran 
said "Here he is" — and I recognized at once, com- 
ing towards us, the one-armed General, whose face 
the newspapers have made familiar. He invited us 
to go upstairs to one of the reception rooms, and 
he led the way to a room where the chairs were 
covered with overalls, and stood all in a solemn 
row, except a tapestry sofa and centrepiece pre- 
sented by Napoleon IH, I suppose to Maximilian, 
and set in light yellow wood, and perfectly 
hideous. 

We three sat in this formal unlived-in room, 
and Mr. Malbran proceeded to be our interpreter 
for about an hour. Whenever I was being inter- 
preted to the President, I had the chance of watch- 
ing his face. His hair is thick and black, his 
190 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

rather flowing moustache tinged with grey. His 
face is round and fresh complexioned, he is power- 
fully built, but too stout. His right arm is cut off 
above the elbow, and every now and then he moves 
the stump, which gives the impression of a bird 
trying to use a broken wing. We had a fine battle 
of wits, which through an interpreter became so 
clear and acute that we all of us had finally to 
laugh over it. Talking through an interpreter is as 
bad as talking to a deaf person through an ear 
trumpet. I said I had come with the hopes of 
doing his portrait, that I regarded myself as an 
historian, and it was my idea to try and represent 
the people of my own day,— whatever country they 
belong to, so long as they have accomplished some- 
thing. 

The President replied that he had not yet ac- 
complished the things for which he represented 
the Mexican people, and that he felt too modest at 
present to allow himself to be done. There was 
only one thing he minded, and that was ridicule. 
"My people will think I am competing with the 
Venus of Milo!" he said, shaking his stump. He 
would not refuse me, however, and suggested 
merely a postponement of three years, to enable 
him in that space of time to "make good" 

I said that success was not necessary to a man's 
greamess. That I had done Asquith, who had not 
brought England through the war, and Winston 

191 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Churchill, who is not yet Prime Minister, and 
Lenin, who has not yet brought the Russian ex- 
periment to' a triumph, and Marconi who ad- 
mitted to me himself that he had not yet completed 
the invention that was to make him most famous ! 
But that these are all nevertheless historical men. I 
explained that Mexico ought to be represented in 
my world collection, and that I understood he, 
General Obregon, was the best and the most repre- 
sentative man of the 15,000,000 people of Mexico! 
The President laughed, he said "If I am the best, 
what must you think of the others?" He said that if 
I were less famous and therefore his sitting to me 
less conspicuous, he might consent, but that he 
was not a worthy subject yet for so distinguished 
an artist, but that he would work during the three 
years to come with a new zeal. Knowing the prize 
in view! 

I swept his compliments aside by asking him to 
help me to be a more distinguished artist by having 
the honor to do him! 

He laughed, and said that he had had many 
dangerous moments in his life, but never had he 
felt nearer to defeat than at this moment, and de- 
feat by a woman . . .! To which I repeated that I 
had been told the President was a man of force, 
but I had no idea he had such force. 

When this was translated, he seemed slightly em- 
barrassed, and I went on, revelling in his discom- 
192 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

fiture : "Lenin said it was extremely tiresome of me 
to want to do him, but that after all, I had come 
such a long way to do it! Now Mexico is just as 
far as Moscow, and are you going to allow it to be 
said that the Bolsheviks are more chivalrous and 
more cultured? Of course, he knew, and I knew, 
and he knew that I knew that there is no compari- 
son between himself and Lenin. The one is bound 
to live in the world's history. . . ." He said desper- 
ately "I will be delighted to see you whenever you 
care to see me. I play cards and billiards and ride 
horse back, and will do any of these things with 
you if you wish. . . ." He then went on to explain 
that Mexico had had so many Presidents in the 
last few years, some of them, men of ability, but 
others, men of no consequence. . . . He did not wish 
to be classified in this latter category, so that when 
I had done his bust, it should turn out to be of 
some one of no importance. . . . He had certain 
definite work he wished to accomplish, work for 
which the Mexican people had elected him their 
representative, and he must try and accomplish 
that work before he had a right to assume any atti- 
tude that might be mistaken by his people as being 
a satisfaction with himself. I said that I under- 
stood his point of view but deplored it! We then 
went on to talk about Mexico, and my appreciation 
of all there was to see, and he said that I was not 
to be allowed to go away before the Centenary cele- 

193 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

bration (September 15th) and that I should rep- 
resent ''Modern Europe" at the Centenary! 
"Modern" indeed! but I do not see myself living 
until September without work! 

He left the room for a moment to give an order, 
explaining he had sent for a reproduction of him- 
self that Madame Obregon had presented to him, 
and that he would like to show me. Presently two 
small children came in: "These are the reproduc- 
tions of me!" he said, laughingly . . . the boy about 
4 years old was certainly like him. The little girl, 
rather frail and white, less so. I wondered at those 
small children not being in bed, it must have been 
nearly ten o'clock. No wonder they looked pale! 
The President then took us upstairs to another 
large uninhabitated reception room, to show us a 
picture done from photographs by a Spanish artist! 
The picture had its face to the wall, and when 
turned round by two attendants, for our inspection, 
it was obviously just what a picture would be like 
done from photographs! I felt it had better go 
back with its face to the wall. I also thought of 
Colonel Miller, the U. S. Military Attache, who 
informed me sometime ago, that visiting a pottery 
he found that a workman had modelled from 
photographs an "excellent and most clever like- 
ness of Obregon" . . . He paid the workman two 
pesos for it and intended to "present it" to the 
President. Done from photographs, for two pesos. 
194 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

How can one compete? I cannot help smiling as I 
recall the three distinguished portrait painters, 
who, on hearing I was coming to Mexico, bade me 
cable to them if there was any work to do, so that 
they might come immediately. To switch off from 
this train of thought I asked, if I were not in- 
discreet in doing so, what the President's impres- 
sion was of the condition of Russia from the re- 
ports of his representatives whom he had sent there 
three months ago. He explained that the repre- 
sentatives had not yet returned, but one was to ar- 
rive in about sixty days. Meanwhile they have 
orders not to send communications by mail. His 
own private opinion was that every movement has 
something good as well as bad in it. He thought 
the result of the Russians having been so long op- 
pressed, was that they were now like birds let out 
of a cage, and not knowing quite what to do with 
their freedom. ... I thought to myself, this is the 
most non-committal opinion I have ever heard ex- 
pressed! and I marvelled at the unhesitating readi- 
ness of the man, who is really a soldier, yet talks 
like a diplomat! My impression was of a man of 
no culture and little education. His face shows no 
trace of thought or even anxiety, he is quick, cau- 
tious and strong-minded. I asked him before I left, 
whether his disinclination to be modelled by me 
was influenced by the fact that I had done Lenin 
and Trotzky. He said most emphatically that this 

195 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

was not the case, and that he was far too inde- 
pendent a man to entertain such small ideas. He 
seemed really rather worried lest I should think 
him discourteous, and he begged me to tell him 
what he could do for me, as he would like to be my 
best friend in Mexico, — would I come and see him 
whenever I liked without any pretext being neces- 
sary and if I could not produce an interpreter, he 
would. "But in three years . . ." he said, "I shall 
speak French!" "and ... I Spanish," I said. He 
picked me flowers from the roof garden, took 
my arm and helped me upstairs and expressed 
in every outward way his desire to be friendly. 
He said to me, as I was leaving: "You must 
know in your heart that I am right . . ." and of 
course I do know it. I have already said it. 
Obregon has not yet done anything to immortalize 
his name in History ... he may 'go' tomorrow, and 
another take his place ... I said to him, "Well, do 
something quickly to justify my doing your bust!" 
Meanwhile let us "wait and see" what he is 
going to do! 

Monday, July 25, 1921. Mexico City. 

I see in the newspaper that Einstein has re- 
turned to Germany. His criticism of the United 
States is quoted in the MEXICAN PoST. He abuses 
them after all their hospitality, he laughs at their 
adulation. He says the men are the lapdogs of 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the women. ... I suppose the American man's 
attitude towards woman is about as extreme in 
one direction as the German's attitude is extreme 
in another. As a woman I can only say, "Thank 
God for the American man." I suppose the word 
'Hausfrau' is almost an international word. It 
describes a certain type of woman, and it is a Ger- 
man type. The German man has made her so. 
Einstein may well scoff at the position of woman 
in the States. To him the chivalry of the Ameri- 
can man is not easily understood. As for Ameri- 
can people's enthusiasm over the Einstein theory, 
"which they did not understand," that is probably 
why they enthused, which they otherwise might 
not. 

This evening at five, — Mr. Malbran called for 
me, and drove me to the Ministry of Finance, to 
keep our appointment with de la Huerta. The 
familiar view of a busy Government office re- 
called Moscow. We passed through two rooms 
in which people were waiting, and I waited only 
about three minutes in a third room full of men. 
The realization that all these people were wait- 
ing to see him made me rather anxious, but we 
were shown in almost immediately to the Min- 
ister's great big reposeful room. We were joined 
by a young man, his English interpreter, and all 
four of us sitting round in a circle, conversation 
began, rather formally. The feeling was: "Well 

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now you're here, say something," and through an 
interpreter I am shy to begin. Mr. Malbran also 
makes me nervous! This feeling of restraint, how- 
ever, only lasted for a few minutes. When we had 
acquitted ourselves of mutual compliments, tell- 
ing each other that we had heard so much about 
the other, and how interested we were in meeting 
one another, I said that I had so many things 
that I wanted to talk to him about, and so many 
questions I wanted to ask. He replied in a most 
gracious manner, that I had but to ask anything 
I liked, without reserve. So I broke the ice by 
asking rather flippantly, why the Government 
didn't make use of all the young men who were 
selling bananas and mangoes in the streets, and 
put them to work on making roads. I said there 
were such beautiful places to see and so hard to 
get to. He took my question more seriously than 
I had anticipated. He said that the economic po- 
sition of the country had to be straightened out 
first, and that meanwhile all the important things 
were held up. "If only," he said, "England would 
recognize us and help to stabilize us, instead of 
creating this wall around us, we might get out 
onto our feet." I told him that his words sounded 
like an echo of Moscow, and he said, "Russia is 
more fortunate than we, for she has her recogni- 
tion now and we have not." 
The subject of Russia just broke down any re- 

T08 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

maining formalities or restraint. We were, as 
one might say, "off." He asked me pointblank 
did I think the majority in Russia were better off 
since the new system. I looked at Mr. Malbran, 
the polished diplomat, who was following this dis- 
cussion with attention. "At the risk of Mr. 
Malbran thinking me a Bolshevik, (and we all 
laughed) I confess that in my humble opinion, 
the majority are better off, that is to say, the work- 
ing people have more. They certainly have no 
less." 

"If those are your views," de la Huerta said,"can 
you explain an alleged interview with you, in a 
Mexican paper, in which you are quoted as saying 
that, 'Communism in Russia has completely broken 
down.' " I denied having made any such state- 
ment, and not being able to read Spanish, that was 
the first I had heard of it. He asked if I had heard 
in Russia any opinions expressed about Mexico. 
I was sorry to have to admit that I had not. No 
one at that time associated me in the least with 
anything but England, and as I did not under- 
stand Russian, I lost much that I might have 
learned from overhearing. 

"And what do you think of Mexico, and of the 
present Government?" he asked. I said rather 
humbly, that it was perfectly bewildering, and 
that I did not understand it. But I knew some of 
the details of their labor laws which were ex- 

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tremely liberal, and I admired very much. "And 
what do you think of the contrast between our 
palaces and our poor — ?" he asked me. I said I 
hadn't seen many palaces. . . . 

"But you have anyway seen Pani's, and Mal- 
bran's!" he said laughing. 

"Yes, but your climate is kind, and your poor do 
not look so wretched, as for instance in England." 

"Come with me some day ... I will show you," 
he offered. 

I said that anything he could show me would 
be greatly appreciated. He promised to snatch an 
hour or two next Thursday at three. "And when 
you have seen some of the misery of these people, 
you will wonder why some of us have not given 
our lives to ameliorate their lot." 

I said, "the first thing that should be done here 
— is Hygiene". 

The Minister agreed, "And next is education." 
He agreed again but added: "All that depends on 
the economic position of the country." 

I said, "You have your soil full of richness, your 
country is richer than almost any other country, 
why do not you Mexicans get up and possess it, 
instead of allowing the foreigner to come in and 
exploit it?" 

"Understand . . ." he answered, "that after years 
of oppression, when we were, as it were, a nation of 
slaves, we gained our liberty, and before we knew 
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what use to make of it, the experienced foreigner 
came to show us and he took things into his own 
hands. Today it complicates our machinery be- 
yond words." 

Conversation began to be a mix-up of Spanish, 
French and English. When the Minister's inter- 
preter failed in his English, Malbran came to the 
rescue in French. The Minister understood enough 
English to prompt in the translations, and I un- 
derstood enough Spanish to get the spirit of his 
meaning. < ] 

"It must be a wonderful thing," I said, "to be in 
a position of power, and to be able to help in the 
uplift of the workers." 

He said he had devoted twenty years of his life 
to this task, at the risk of being abused and misun- 
derstood. He told us of his organization of a 
labor representation within the Government as 
early as 191 6, before Russia ever began her revolu- 
tion. He said it had been hard work, and things 
had not gone as they should go, they had been 
wrongly organized. The revolutions that had 
occurred one after another in Mexico had not 
helped the masses. 

"Revolution," he said, "is composed of three fac- 
tors. The first is propaganda, — the second is armed 
force and the third is evolution; and we began 
unfortunately with armed force, the propaganda 
followed and the evolution was only partial." 

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We discussed the difference between proletariat 
and democracy, he quoted Lenin, who believes in 
the one, but he believes in the other. He rather 
deplored the fact that the Third Internationale 
had broken away from democracy. I cannot quote 
the discussion, it was too long and too intricate, 
and I would risk to misquote. But he spoke with 
an earnestness and a keenness that even interpreta- 
tion did not spoil. He said that he did all he could^ 
and all he dared to do, to further the cause of the 
laboring masses, but he was handicapped, out of 
loyalty to his President and a desire not to com- 
promise his country, by going too far in the world 
movement. But he insisted several times upon 
the fact that there would be no real amelioration 
of suffering in the world, until people had gen- 
erally realized their duty towards their fellows, of 
helping and sharing. I said I did not know why I 
interested myself in the destiny of the "proletaire" 
but that I could not help it, and that it was a sub- 
ject that always roused me. 

The Minister, with visionary eyes, said almost 
passionately, "Sometimes I feel like a woman with 
a great love in her heart, that she longs to tell but 
has to surpress because of the conventions of the 
world that surround her, and which force her, al- 
most nun-like, to preserve in silence," and it 
sounded beautiful in Spanish. 

Malbran, whom he had referred to as "our con- 

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servative friend!" had become interested, and 
towards the end he ceased to be interpreter and 
joined in the discussion. 

I thought of all the people in all the rooms who 
were patiently and impatiently waiting to see their 
Minister of Finance, who was engaged in Socialist 
arguments with this strange party! At the end, I 
said I felt I had drunk deep of clear pure water! 
and he said chivalrously that it had been a great 
pleasure to him to have opportunity of once in 
awhile "letting himself go. . . ." 

He repeated his promise about fetching me 
Thursday, to see. . . He did not precisely define 
what. 

We got down into the street, and found the car, 
and drove away with a strange sense of excitement 
and stimulation, at least I did, and as for Malbran, 
who had been rather silent on our way there, he 
was now quite expansive. We talked animatedly 
all the way back to the Geneva Hotel, where he 
dropped me. We discussed the psychology of de la 
Huerta, I said I would hate to be disillusioned, but 
that my instinct told me the man had all the pas- 
sion and the sincerity of the Russians I had known 
in Moscow. We agreed that if de la Huerta had 
been imprisoned for years by a Czarist regime, he 
would be as fanatical and as ready to give his life 
for the cause, as volcanic and ruthless as any of the 
Russian Revolutionaries. Of the few people I 

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have met so far in Mexico, de la Huerta is by far 
the most interesting. 

Wednesday, July 27, 1921. Mexico City. 

When I returned from riding at midday, it was 
to find Pani's car waiting for me, and the infor- 
mation that four times people had called to take 
me to the "Haripeyo" that was taking place at the 
bull ring since 11 o'clock. I hurriedly changed 
my clothes, cursing fate, that I had not been told of 
this in time. Arrived there I was welcomed by 
Pani, and Malbran. There were quite a lot of peo- 
ple, but I didn't know who they were. I regretted 
not having had the chance of asking my friends. 
In the ring there were about a dozen men on horse- 
back, and one of them I recognized as my friend 
Guadalupe. He looked extremely picturesque in his 
leather clothes and huge brimmed white hat em- 
broidered in gold. The game seemed to be to chase 
a wild horse and lassoo it. Dick was wildly excited. 
He shouted: "That's good!" at the top of his voice 
when the pony was violently thrown to the ground. 
It may have been a wild horse, but a tame horse fed 
on oats is wilder. This animal looked unkempt, 
moth-eaten, and dazed, I suppose from fright. It 
must be a rotten game for the horse, to be tripped 
up when he's galloping full speed. They would 
lassoo his front legs together and then his back 
legs so that the animal lay on the ground helpless, 
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then a man would straddle it, and the horse would 
rise to his feet with the man on his back. They did 
the same with a bull, having previously pursued it, 
caught it by the tail, given the tail a twist round 
the man's leg, which just threw the galloping bull 
with a thud to the ground. Almost the best feat 
was performed by a rider who pursued the wild 
horse, caught it by the mane and jumped from his 
own horse on the back of the wild one, as they 
galloped side by side. They are wonderful riders 
these Mexicans. They can sit anything and can- 
not be shaken off! But I would like to see them on 
a powerful big horse with an English saddle. 

Dick and I spent the afternoon in the garden 
of the American Embassy. There is a little round 
clear blue-tiled pond full of goldfish, and Dick 
paddled and played and was completely happy. I 
asked Mr. Summerlin for news, as I get nothing 
to read but the MEXICAN POST. But he was full of 
mystery and told me nothing about anything. When 
people get a suspicion that one may be writing, 
they became terribly secretive. I remember a time 
when I used to hear state secrets, and people 
used to talk about things in front of me as if I 
were perfectly idiotic and negligible. 

Today I asked Mr. Summerlin: "Is recognition 
any nearer . . .?" He shrugged his shoulders in 
true diplomatic fashion — it told me nothing. That 
he was very busy and finally called away on urgent 

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matters, was all I learnt. We might be on the eve 
of war for all I know! The people one meets are 
supremely indifferent to everything. The news- 
papers record certain rebellions in various parts, 
no one even reads them. Even the Tampico Oil 
'hold up' is now a thing of the past, the papers 
hardly mention it at all, nor the oil wells that are 
on fire; it is as if the Mexican nation was so blase 
with excitements that nothing any longer can stir 
their interest. 

Thursday, July 28, 1921. Mexico City. 

Punctually at 3 o'clock, and true to his word, 
de la Huerta fetched me in his car. Mr. Malbran 
was of the party, and as also Mr. Rubio, the good- 
looking young man who interprets for him. To 
my great joy he told the chauffeur to drive to El 
Disirto. It is one of the places I want to see. If 
the expedition was meant to show me the poverty 
of Mexico, one did not have to go far, the outskirts 
of the town are as sordid, dirty, and miserable as 
can be. But out in the open road, (and a beauti- 
ful road it was) we met almost a procession of In- 
dians, one behind the other, walking into the town 
with their loads. These loads consist chiefly of 
terra-cotta pots and cooking utensils, piled up, in 
and around a wooden case, the whole weight of 
which is carried by a strap round the forehead. 
Thus, barefooted and bent double, heads straining 
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forward against the weight, muscles of their necks 
swollen, lips sometimes blue, and bulging eyes 
focussed on the ground immediately in front, the 
Indian man, woman and boy will walk twelve 
kilometres. De la Huerta, pointing to some In- 
dians on burros, said: "Those are the privileged 
classes." 

"How are you going to better the conditions of 
these people?" I asked . . . 

"Caramba!" he exclaimed with a gesture of per- 
plexity, and this needed no interpretation. 

"What is your motive in showing me *La misere' 
of Mexico . . .?" 

He said: "Your bourgeois friends have shown 
you what they had to show," and he referred laugh- 
ingly to yesterday's Haripeyo and the description 
in the newspapers of the smart people present. 
"Each of us shows you his own side . . . .". He v/ent 
on to tell me that in olden days, the poverty and 
distress was hidden from visitors as much as pos- 
sible, but that times had changed, and to-day every- 
thing was open for anyone who wished to investi- 
gate. "It is good that foreigners should see what 
we made our Revolution for." I was a little bit 
perplexed, and remarked: "But how has it helped, 
if the people are still in this condition?" 

He explained that things were slowly progres- 
sing, that the development w^as from the coast 
towards the centre, he said proudly, that the State 

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of Sonora, of which he is Governor (elected by a 
tremendous majority) has no such conditions, and 
he expressed the desire that I might see his State — 
"But these people" and he waved towards the pa- 
tient procession, remarking as he did so upon the 
expression of suffering in their faces — "these 
people are better off even than they were. In the 
days of Porfirio Diaz they worked as they are 
worked today, but they worked for an employer. 
They were whipped to work. They were slaves. 
They had even to marry according to their em- 
ployers' selection. Today they are doing the work 
for themselves, they do it of free choice, and what- 
ever small gain they make, it is theirs." 

I quoted what a friend had told me, that the 
Indians would rather sell bananas in the gutter, 
than own a bit of land and have to cultivate it. De 
la Huerta's face took a savage expression: "Try 
and take away a piece of land from the Indian who 
owns it and see what happens . . ." he said. 

Under the thirty years peaceful reign of Porfirio 
Diaz, a handful of people prospered, a propertied 
class and a rich leisured class sprang up, "But the 
working people were as you see them here on the 
road. Are you surprised they rose in revolt?" 

I told him that Russia seemed to be concentrat- 
ing all her propaganda on the next generation, and 
that the obsession of the moment was education. 
De la Huerta said in reply, that after he became 
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Governor of Sonora, he increased the schools from 
eighty to four hundred and twenty-seven in one 
year. The man is evidently jfuU of ideas and 
ideals, but he has not a free hand. He referred to 
the criticism of the w^orld, and said it was neces- 
sary to show what effort and what aims there were. 
I told him that what was far more convincing than 
seeing conditions was meeting people. Of him- 
self, for instance, I had heard great criticism, from 
a certain class. But it was only necessary to meet 
him to see that he was a sincere idealist, and not 
in the least as the world described him. De la 
Huerta turned to the mobile-faced Malbran, and 
said: "There! Let your diplomatic mind take in all 
this ..." I said laughingly, that I thought the 
Argentine Minister would make a very excellent 
Ambassador to Russia, when his time was up in 
Mexico, but the others said his initiation had only 
just begun, and he would not be ready for quite a 
while! 

El Desirto Is round a corner, at the top of a 
mountain. The mountain is covered with trees, 
and profuse vegetation. Our car climbed and zig- 
zagged and encircled. On our left was a preci- 
pice. On our right a steep straight bank. We 
were within half a mile of Desirto, when it sud- 
denly began to pour rain, thunder and lightning 
and hail, as it only can in the mountains. De la 
Huerta ordered that the car should turn round and 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

go back. He said it would be dangerous to attempt 
the remainder of that half mile in the rain. I was 
terribly disappointed at not getting there and 
thought him unnecessarily fussy, and alarmist, 
but . . . trust these people to know their own 
country! In less than five minutes, what had been 
a perfectly smooth, good, dusty road, suddenly be- 
came greasy and sticky, so that our car skidded 
crabwise down the hill. Seeing a precipice on one 
side, and a car not under control was alarming in 
the extreme. Behind us came a Ford, and it also 
slid drunkenly down the road, and I felt that no 
brakes would be able to stop it bumping us. Mer- 
cifully for us it went sideways into the ditch, and 
mercifully for them it was not the precipice side! 
We stopped and put chains on round our wheels, 
— it took time. De la Huerta was perfectly calm 
and philosophical but apologetic, he said this ad- 
dition from above was not part of his programme! 
Even with chains our car too went into the ditch, 
and as by this time the rain had slackened, I was 
delighted to get out and walk, but the road was so 
slippery that even arm in arm, the Minister and I 
could hardly stand up. I picked a variety of wild 
flowers, and watched de la Huerta surrounded by 
clamoring Indians who wanted pesos for having 
helped the car out of the ditch — it was rather an 
attractive scene, and he really does love his In- 
dians! I say "his" Indians, because he has Indian 

210 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

blood in his veins, but he told me also that his 
grandfather was a Spaniard from Granada and 
his mother was the daughter of a Polish Jew, born 
in France. It is a glorious mix-up. 

I asked him if it would be possible for me to 
stop and see Villa on my way to California, and if 
so would he give me a letter of introduction. De 
la Huerta laughed, he said it would be quite pos- 
sible and that with a letter from him I would be 
quite safe . . . (Safe — from what?) I told him 
I mean to leave in about ten days. "Yes," he said, 
"if the Mexican government allows you to go!" I 
told him about the Mexican Consul in New York 
hesitating to vise my passport, because Mexico did 
not want any Bolsheviks, and I said how surprised 
I had felt at Mexico suddenly becoming so re- 
spectable. 

"Do you consider a conservative attitude re- 
spectable?" he asked, adding: "I call respectabil- 
ity having a sincere and independent opinion, and 
having the courage to acknowledge it . . ." Then 
with a sudden impulse he plucked at a scarlet 
flower in my hand, one that I had gathered among 
the rocks, and half audibly, more to himself than 
to me, he said: "That represents the life blood of 
these toiling people . . ." 

Later, when we neared home, he remarked: 
"Ah! if we could only work at ease, without the 
shadow of that spectre in the North . . ." 

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We agreed that no country could independently 
work out its salvation, except Russia, who was not 
overshadowed. We had got back to Mexico City, 
and I was nearing my 'home' when suddenly he 
asked: "What is your impression of Trotzky . . .? 
I told him I had compromised myself on two con- 
tinents shouting his praises! 

"And Lenin . . .?" 

I told him. Then came this astonishing final 
question : 

"Is Trotsky a good man?" 

"From what point of view good?" 

"Morally ..." 

I could not embark at this last moment upon 
a discussion of what are morals through an inter- 
preter. I thought. I hesitated. I wondered, as 
I never had wondered before, about Trotzky, and 
then I admitted that so far as I knew, Trotzky was 
a moral man 1 

Friday, July 29, 1921. Mexico City. 

This evening Jose Vasconselos came to see me 
and we talked for nearly two hours. He is head 
of the Department of Education. I am told he is 
one of the most brilliant and most promising men 
of Mexico. I felt that a talk with him would do 
much to help me to understand what the present 
Government is aiming at, and what effort is be- 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

ing made for the future of Mexico. I tackled 
him at once very frankly about his education sys- 
tem. I said to him : "The bourgeois tell me that you 
have caused to be printed 20,000 copies of Shakes- 
peare and Homer for illiterate Indians, who can 
neither read nor write." 

This criticism was no news to him, he proceeded 
to explain to me that these classics were for the 
town libraries, and there were 10,000 towns. "What 
would you put in the libraries?" he asked — "What 
would you have the people read as soon as they 
can read?" He said that he was basing his system 
on the Carnegie System, and that during one of 
the former Revolutions when he was an exile, he 
lived at San Antonio, Texas. There he went into 
the Public Library and borrowed an edition of 
Plato. Every book that is loaned is inscribed with 
the name and date of the person to whom it is 
loaned. "In one year, that volume of Plato had 
been loaned to thirty people, and that was San 
Antonio, a community of cowboys." 

He explained to me his great difficulty in getting 
enough books for the 10,000 libraries. He said 
that if he wrote to Madrid for 10,000 volumes of 
Don Quixote, they could only supply him with 
t;oo. So he must get them printed himself. He 
promised me a complete set of the standard lib- 
rary works. This had nothing to do with the elem- 
entary books distributed to the schools. He said 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

he would like me to see, in some of the little towns 
how keen the Indian parents are on education for 
their children. 

"When the next generation are educated — then 
will evolve the real Socialist State!" he said. 

He referred to the reign of Porfirio Diaz as 
having accomplished nothing for the education of 
the masses. His ideas about social reform are 
Sparticist, he quoted Liebknecht and said that he 
favored the plan of limited fortunes, rather than 
communism, as the one seemed to him to kill in- 
itiative, and he did not like the idea of being a 
slave to the State. The only class he really 
despised was the bourgeois, "people who eat three 
meals a day, how can their , brains work — ?" 
People who assume an attitude of culture, but who 
never open a book, certainly not a classic. How 
dared they attempt to criticize! "The only thing 
in their favor in this country is that at least they 
don't have any part in the affairs of the govern- 
ment!" 

Vasconselos is a queer personality, mixture of 
Spanish and Mexican, yet he said he cared noth- 
ing for the civilization of the Occident, he under- 
stood better the Orient, and followed in the train 
of Tagore, whom he talked of with great admira- 
tion. I asked him whether on the whole he was 
satisfied with the way things were shaping for 
Mexico, and he said he was certainly satisfied. 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

That in his opinion revolutions were a thing of the 
past, there were a stirring and an awakening all 
through the land. 

We discussed literature, art, social reforms, 
education of children, Russian evolution, the com- 
promises of Lenin, the activities of Trotzky, the 
prejudices, the ignorances, the indifferences of the 
bourgeois, the national spirit of Mexico, the planet 
we live in and the ineptitude of humans to adapt 
themselves to it. He said he felt it was almost a 
crime to put children into the world: "If they are 
stupid, indifferent and incapable of thought they 
are little better than the brutes, if they are intellect- 
uals and have any ideas and ideals at all, then they 
suffer unendurably — No, this world, even with 
its mountains and its lakes and its vegetation, it is 
no place for humans . . .1" 

Saturday, July 30, 1921. Puebla. 

We left Mexico City by the 5 P.M. train for 
Puebla. The train was full and the first class com- 
partment resembled a dirty tramcar. (I qualify 
the tram car, because there are tramcars that are 
clean, but this was not.) A wedding party came 
to see off a honeymoon couple. They were a quiet 
and completely self-absorbed pair. I watched 
them rather unmercifully. It took us five hours 
to get to Puebla. Long before that time, the bride- 
groom, so smartly attired in frock coat, varnished 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

button boots, and cloth cap, wearied of his collar 
and deposited it like a crown on his bride's knees. 
He seemed happier so, and looked much more 
himself with a handkerchief round his neck. 
Towards the end of the journey, he seemed very 
impatient. Behind Dick and me sat a large cigar 
smoking man, who in a foreign accent asked if we 
were English. He was from Manchester, and had 
lived in Mexico 26 years! He told us what hotel 
to go at Puebla, (we had reserved no rooms). He 
insisted on buying lemonade and chicken for us 
at the wayside station. Finally he took possession 
of our luggage and said he would himself take us 
to our hotel in his car. 

He was met on the platform by his son, and in 
his car sat his wife and his daughter. I tried to 
back out discreetly and take a taxi, but they were 
all very insistent, and kind. Finally, one hotel 
being full, he found us rooms in the second. I 
asked him his name. He was the British Vice 
Consul. 

July 31, 1921. 

Dick, who was sleeping with me, had an attack 
of croup so that I was awake most of the night. At 
dawn I was awakened by bugles of a regiment 
riding into town, besides the clanging of church 
bells, and the crowing of cocks! Shortly after that 
we got up. 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Dick insisted on looking up some of his "ship 
friends" who live in the town. We found them, 
and left him in their back garden playing in their 
water tank. It was a great chance to see some of 
the churches, and drive round the town, and do 
the things that bore Dick. 

The town is overburdened with churches, but 
their exteriors are so decorative that one is glad 
they exist. The domes are tiled, either with blue 
and white or yellow. They glisten in the sun like 
enamel. I went into one called "Of the Company" 
and happened upon a service with a cardinal. At 
least, I suppose he was a cardinal. He was dressed 
in the color of that name. This crimson melodra- 
matic figure seemed to me emblematical of the in- 
quisitorial Church of Spain. Sitting all over the 
floor were Indian women with their babies, and 
when the organ subsided, there was a real baby 
chorus. 

The church entrances are the congregating 
places (as in Italy) of the most wretched beggars. 
I could not help wondering why a man with no 
legs submits to living his remaining life on a plank 
with four wheels ; why old age with its skin wiz- 
ened like a walnut can bear the degradation of ex- 
treme filth, and of asking charity on bended knee; 
and why a blind individual can roll sightless grey 
orbs and fix them on me while so doing. Why don't 
they end life? Why is it endurable? But almost 

217 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

worse in my estimation, was the woman who 
passed me by, bent double by an enormous load on 
her back, and dragged down by a baby tied in a 
bundle to her breast. Must she bear both those 
burdens? 

At midday, there was supposed to be a "battle 
of flowers." I have seen the real thing on the Riv- 
iera, where the national temperament is joyous. 
But can people here have a real spontaneous out- 
burst, when the big sad-eyed Indian stands at the 
street corner, gaping and incapable of throwing 
off the melancholy of generations? A few dressed- 
up cars appeared, but there was no profuse flower 
throwing. Perhaps, like me, the Pueblans were 
economizing. Anyway, it was so dull and half- 
hearted that we took a train to San Francisco. 

This is a church and garden on the outskirts of 
the city. Soon we rambled on, up and up, to a 
hill summit, from which one viewed the city in 
the plain, and Popocatapetl with its snow peak, 
emerging through a bank of cloud. It was beau- 
tiful on our hilltop, wild, deserted, peaceful, and 
the persistent Church bells came to us distantly. 
We had been told by Dick's "ship friends," that it 
was not possible to go outside the town without a 
man, and so we had Dick. He found a dew pond, 
and was perfectly happy. 

Puebla is an old town built by the Spaniards. It 
is more Mexican than Mexico City. There are 
218 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

more sombrero'd people and more flocks of laden 
burros, and more houses with little "patios," than 
in Mexico. The shops are more attractive because 
they contain i Mexican things, instead' of, as in 
Mexico City, inferior foreign goods, in a desire 
to be cosmopolitan. There are more old tiled 
houses in Puebla. Fewer people speak English. 
No one in the hotel understands anything. This 
evening Louise tried to explain to a group of five 
that we wanted mineral water. They did not un- 
derstand until she made a noise of a bottle ex- 
ploding. 

Monday, August i, 1921. Puebla. 

We caught a 10 o'clock train to Cholula. It was 
terribly crowded, but we managed to get a front 
seat in the second car. 

Halfway along the line, the front car ran off the 
track. It took at least an hour and a half hard 
work on the part of a crowd of Indians, to get it 
back again. They all looked so clean in their 
white linen pajama suits (they look like this) tied 
round the waist with a faded and fringed blue or 
red sash, and the absurdly big sombrero hat, and 
bare feet. One wonders how a working man can 
wear white, it seems so impractical, and yet these 
men looked cleaner than Dick when he is in white, 
at the end of a day! How can they dig as they do, 
Vv^ith naked feet on the iron spade? 

219 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

We sat down on the grass in a broiling sun and 
watched their efforts to reinstate the car. Pres- 
ently, on his private trolley, arrived the "traffic 
superintendent," a young stalwart American, who 
threw off his coat, displaying a khaki shirt and a 
large revolver in his belt. There was no mistaking 
him for anything but an American. He was the 
rather brutal, square-jaw'ed type. He contained in 
his face everything that the Latin and the Indian 
lacked: force, determination, power to command. 
Moreover, he was broad-shouldered and a head 
taller than anyone else. When he lifted a crowbar 
and attempted to do any work himself, the Indians 
fell back and watched him openmouthed! I said 
things to myself about the Anglo-Saxon race. 

He heard me call Dick, and asked me instantly 
if I were English. He seemed glad to have some- 
one to talk to. I asked him if he had been in the 
war, and of course he had, been at Chateau 
Thierry, and in every other fray. He said he was 
working for an English company (which the tram- 
car system is), and that nearly all the superinten- 
dents and heads of the English lines were Ameri- 
cans. I was surprised at this, for we had good 
colonizers, and if we can get on with natives in 
India, South Africa, Australia, Nigeria, etc., why 
not with Mexicans. I told him so. He explained 
that the Mexican is quite different to work with 
and very diffcult; that he is very sensitive and 

220 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

touchy, and that he will only work with good will, 
''as a matter of fact" he said, "I have not their good 
will as you can see by my hip," and he patted his 
revolver. "Why not?" I asked. "They're Bol- 
sheviks!" he explained, and unfortunately for me, 
at that moment, the car went back onto the rails 
and there was a rush for the seats. We secured our 
same front row, but another man came and sat 
next to us, who had not hitherto been there. I dis- 
liked the look of him, and before we had gone very 
far, it was evident he was drunk. He was not an 
Indian, but the world-wide white type that can 
be revolting and repulsive. The look on his face 
made me feel quite sick. I felt if I had a revolver 
it would have been an awfully good thing to shoot 
him, because nobody could have minded, and it 
so obviously would have been a helpful thing to 
do. When he bent across Louise and bought a 
couple of bananas off the Indian on my left, and 
offered them to Dick, I said firmly ''no." So he 
looked at me, a terrible look, and threw the two 
bananas out of the window, and the change he got 
back from paying for them followed the bananas. 
He then turned round and entertained the whole 
car behind us, at our expense. Though, what he 
said we could not understand. 

Arrived finally, two hours late, at Cholula, he 
was walked off by four seemingly very devoted 
friends. I doubt not they purposed to rid him of 

221 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the rest of his money instead of letting him fling 
it into the grass. 

In the middle of the village street we stood still 
and looked up and down. It was one o'clock. We 
had brought no food with us and we knew not 
where to go, nor whom to ask. A fellow traveller, 
respectably dressed, a Mexican farmer probably 
and who could speak about five words of English 
came to our rescue: ''What you want . . .?" he 
asked. 

A restaurant? He shook his head! A Hotel? He 
came from Cholula but had never heard of such a 
thing. Tourists brought their food with them, he 
made us understand. "But I will ask" and he went 
into the chemist shop. Surely, there was a res- 
taurant, down the road. We tracked it down, he 
came with us. The street was formed by perfectly 
straight barefronted houses. It might have been 
an Irish village, but looking through doorways 
there seemed to be contained in it a whole world 
of gardens and patios. We entered one of these, 
as directed, and found ourselves in a clean bare 
yard. We went to the first door on the yard, but it 
was a bedroom. The second door was the restaur- 
ant, the third combined kitchen and chicken house. 
An old wizened, bent woman came forward to 
greet us, and two pretty young Indian girls. Could 
she give us food? She could. 

Soon? 

222 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Immediately. 
What could she give us? 

Some huevos (eggs) and some came (meat) 
with potata. Our kind cicerone then left us, ex- 
cusing himself, he had business. We seated our- 
selves in the primitive room, which was clean and 
whitewashed, and floor tiled. They laid a cloth 
for us which was clean and still wet. We waited 
hardly any time at all before they served us a hot 
and excellent meal, the best I have had in Mexico, 
and for two pesos, the three of us. But the wizened 
old woman was much concerned that she could not 
talk with us. She longed, I could see, to know 
where we came from, and she kept asking why our 
Signore had gone away, and not returned! When 
her two habitual customers came in for their meals, 
she began great discussion with them about us. 
We were a great diversion. The men who came 
in were not Indians, they were sullen Mexicans. 
One of them talked to the little Indian serving 
girl as if she were a dog, ordered his food gruffly 
and never said thank you. 

Women have no position in Mexico — they are 
supposed to exist solely for the satisfaction of men. 
We said good day, and "Mucho gracias" and 
sallied forth into the street once more. Not know- 
ing where to go, nor where to find the famous 
pyramid, and Dick being far from well, I decided 
to go to the nearest place in reach. This happened 

223 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to be a steep hill with a white church on the sum- 
mit. It had been a beacon to us for miles in the 
plain as we travelled steadily towards it. Slowly 
we ascended by wide low stone steps, that went 
winding up among the vegetation and wild flowers. 
About halfway we suddenly heard a band of music, 
and it came nearer and nearer. Soon there came 
into view a procession of white clad sombrero'd 
Indians playing their instruments as they came 
down the winding hill steps. The pageant did not 
come our way, but passed in front of us, and cut 
down into a steep and narrow path, and were lost 
to view among the shrub. Taking our time (for 
Dick seemed weak, and our hearts were thumping 
somewhat, as they always do with the slightest ex- 
ertion at this altitude — ) we eventually reached the 
summit. It seemed utterly deserted. The stillness 
was uncanny. The church, which may be old but 
had a renovated and very newly whitewashed ap- 
pearance, had tiled domes that were quite beauti- 
ful. Tall cypresses, as in Italy, grew on the terrace 
in front. There was a rampart with seats all round 
the terrace edge. The climb had satisfied my desire, 
which is always to get onto a height, when arriv- 
ing in a new place, in order to survey the land and 
'place oneself. From this church height one cer- 
tainly surveyed the country for miles. Louise and 
I walked round and round, looking ever5rwhere for 
anything that might be interpreted as a pyramid. 
224 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

But we never satisfied ourselves on that. It was 
not until we got back in the evening and read up 
the guide book, that I learnt that was a pyramid 
we were on. The pagan pyramid, dedicated to the 
god Queatzalcoatl, on the summit of which the 
Christians had built their church. 

While thus absorbed, in the distant view, Dick 
disappeared. When I looked round for him he 
was nowhere to be seen. I went down the steep 
flight of steps to the half way terrace below, and 
called. Presently the little figure appeared from 
above, and followed me down. He came to me 
with a pious and mysterious look. "Some day" he 
said, "I'll tell you what I've been doing. " I said, 
"I must know, now, at once — do tell me . . ." He 
looked shy, and then explained that he had gone 
inside the church. "It was quite a nice church 
inside — there were none of those awful figures like 
we've seen, — you know — and I said a prayer . . . 
knelt down . . . right up by the steps in front of the 
railing. Oh! just prayed for Teta-tee* that she 
might come back to us . . . 1" It was so unexpected. 
I did not know that Dick believed in God. I did 
not know he wanted Margaret back with us . . . 
but there in the stillness of the great Mexican 
plain, high up on the hill of a little town called 
Cholula, Margaret had not been forgotten. It 
seemed almost like a wireless from her. 



♦Margaret, his sister. 22 C 



MY AMERICAN DIAR Y 

It must be explained that Margaret is living in 
England with her father's family. She is being 
educated with a little cousin her same age. They 
share a French governess, have a villa at Cannes 
in the winter, riding, swimming, gymnasium and 
special dancing classes. A house with a garden in 
London, dogs, rabbits, horses and birds, Rolls 
Royce cars, servants to wait, party frocks, lessons 
in deportment, and all the things that are neces- 
sary, I am told, to the perfect bringing up of a 
proper little girl. Not good for her, they assure me, 
wild trips to Mexico, wild talk about Russia, 
Americanization in New York, studio environ- 
ment of her mother. These things are possible 
(though not desirable) for a boy, but for a girl. . . . 
Well, I would be selfish if I refused for her all the 
things that I cannot give her. Sometimes my soul 
rebels, and I say to myself "Two rooms, anywhere, 
however humble, but both children to share my 
standard of life. . . ." Since last February when 
she saw us off on the Aquitania we have not seen 
our Margaret. The trip to Russia and the work if 
offered, enabled me to have one child to live with 
me, and that was Dick, who had lived with my 
parents ever since he was born and I had to work. 

Perhaps there existed in the bottom of my heart 
a vague hope that Mexico might give me back 
Margaret, as Russia had given me back Dick. 
However and wherever this is eventually achieved, 
226 





MARGARET, WHO IS BEING BROUGHT UP IN ENGLAND, 
LIKE A CONVENTIONALLY PROPER LITTLE GIRL! 

(Photograph by Marceau) 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

there is no doubt in my mind that the only crown 
to my work can be the reunion of us all three. 
Until I can build up a home and an environment 
worthy of Margaret, I have achieved no success. 
It is an incentive to work, and in the meanwhile 
one must not lose heart. One must not count, at 
night, the months that have passed since January. 
One must not think of the growth, in body, mind 
and soul, of the child who is out of sight. One 
must not expect her to be just as one left her. One 
must not think too much about her at all, for fear 
it gets too hard — and above all one must never al- 
low oneself to think on lines that critics would de- 
scribe as "sob-stuff." 

We lay on our hillside which was really a pyra- 
mid side, and the sun burnt as I tried to count how 
many churches there were in the plain, but gave 
it up as too long a job. Beautiful old toned bells 
kept ringing around and below us from every di- 
rection. One big church would have been ample 
for the size of the little town, and money and labor 
better spent on drainage and sanitation. While 
thus ruminating a cassocked priest came down the 
winding way, saying his prayers out loud, out of a 
book. By him walked an attendant who held a 
linen umbrella over his head to shade him. So 
absorbed was he in his prayers that he never 
noticed the Indian man and woman who got up 
from their seat under the tree and came towards 

227 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

him. He had to stop on his way when they threw 
themselves down on their knees before him. He 
blessed them with the sign of the Cross, and they 
remained kneeling and crossing themselves until 
he was out of sight and sound. 

When we got back to Puebla at 5 o'clock, Dick 
threw himself on my bed all of a heap. I took his 
temperature — it was 102 — I undressed him and 
in a few minutes he was in a heavy feverish sleep. 

Twice that night he waked me suddenly by 
loud cries. He screamed in terror. When I put 
the light on he looked at me with glassy eyes and 
did not know me. He was momentarily delirious. 
Never had I any experience of such a thing. I 
realized in a flash all that my family thought of 
my bringing Dick to Mexico. I thought of Mar- 
garet and of the contrast of her proper environ- 
ment. I got into a panic and resolved that if it 
were humanly possible for him to travel, Dick 
should return to Mexico by the 6:30 train next 
morning. 

At five, when we had to get up, he was tired and 
weak, but his fever had subsided. 

August 3, 1921. Mexico City. 

I went to see Mr. Rameo Martinez, the head of 
the Academia, and asked him kindly to send a 
plaster moulder to my hotel to cast the little sketch 
for a possible Russian Monument. I brought it 
228 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

from New York to finish here. I had a perfectly 
excellent Mexican "boxer" model, broadshoul- 
dered and full of muscles, that Mr. Martinez pro- 
duced for me, thus enabling me to finish it. I also 
asked him if I could visit his open air school out 
in the country, at Cherubosco, which he accord- 
ingly invited me to do. 

Edith Bonilla motored me out there. The stu- 
dents work in a patio. Martinez' idea is the open 
air, no false lights. He has talked to me too of 
his ambition that his students shall be Mexican, 
not cosmopolitan, nor French in their art. The idea 
is right. But when one has looked around : what 
is Mexican Art? There is Toltec, Maya, Aztec 
art. There is Spanish (colonial) evidenced in 
architecture. But one looks in vain for evidences 
of modern Mexican Art. At the school some per- 
fectly mediocre studies were being done by stu- 
dents who, by their years, should have been far be- 
yond what they were doing. There were mature 
men painting the eternal still life groups of pots 
and oranges. There was the eternal model, an old 
woman sitting iiolding a bowl. Only the model 
in this instance was brown instead of white. I 
realized with overwhelming weariness the futility 
of schools. . . . T went to a school once. A night 
school. I was paralysed. I achieved nothing, I 
was the most unpromising pupil there. Moreover 
I hated it and dreaded it, and only went out of 

229 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

sheer self-discipline. This is at a time when I had 
quite a lot of commissions to work at in my own 
studio. I benefited in no way from the school, 
and I don't believe anyone else does. At best it 
succeeds in turning out a mould, a type, a "school." 
Only once in a million times does one arise, who 
would have arisen anyway, anyhow, anywhere. Mr. 
Martinez, who has worked in Paris (why?) who 
has no more ''the soul of Mexico," or the depth to 
realise it, will work in vain, open air or indoor, 
unless he instils some spirit into those students! 
Always these masters point to a student's work 
and with pride call it "du Gauguin"; easy enough 
to make a bad Gauguin. I wonder on whom it re- 
flects most discredit: Gauguin or the student. If 
only the teacher would say, "My God! All this is 
awful, let's have something new. . . ." 

There was one sculptor at the Country School. 
His Christian name was Phidias, not his fault, and 
no one could have foreseen. He looked white and 
on the verge of suicide. He said he had been 
working in Paris . . . but that he had done nothing 
since. He had been back six months. He said 
there were no sculptors and no art appreciation in 
Mexico. He certainly could not, even if he would, 
have worked in the room into which he took me. 
It would be a perfectly fit room in which to hang 
oneself. He looked very depressed, — I fear he 
will starve. 
230 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I came back, and went to the reception of the 
Pani's. Like last time full of cosmopolitans, diplo- 
mats, from South America, such as Uruguay, 
Guatamala and the like, and also Mr. Malbran 
and Mr. Summerlin. There were heaps of women 
and girls, sitting in rows, and men grouped! in 
doorways. That is the only unconventional part 
of the Pani parties, that the sexes do not engage 
one another in conversation. Maybe it is the habit 
of the country. 

Today they had for diversion (besides the jazz 
band, which did bring the sexes together for short 
intervals) the Indian girl who has won the beauty 
prize, and 10,000 pesos with it. She was in her 
pretty Indian dress and certainly looked very at- 
tractive, though more Roumanian than Indian. 
Everyone was making a fuss of her, and she was 
being photographed by flashlight with Madame 
Pani, and the highest of the land. This little peas- 
ant girl was perfectly smiling and composed, not a 
bit shy or awkward. Her naked feet reposed on 
the velvet cushions on the parquet floor, and she 
seemed to gain a great distinction from her sur- 
roundings. Behind her she has generations of 
noble Indian race. Her dignity and calm had the 
effect of making the other women appear rathei 
banal. She looked as though a young Cortes should 
fling his fame and fortune at her feet! 

231 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Friday, August 5, 1921. Mexico City. 

I went to see Pani in his office at what they call 
*'Relationes." I wanted to say good-bye to him 
and ask his help in getting over the frontier. His 
office building inside looked like a converted 
Palace. I had to go through a large gilt room that 
contained beautiful tables with a life sized bust on 
each, presumably of former Presidents (so they do 
have their busts done sometimes!) 

I asked him if the place were a Palace, and he 
said that it was not, but merely his office. I sup- 
pose the busts, the gilt and the good furniture, etc., 
are the proofs of Pani's culture. I like Pani, he is 
not interesting, but is shrewd, and kind, and has a 
sense of humor. He smiles always, even on official 
occasions. Other Ministers smile when his name 
is mentioned. This because he likes old Masters, 
and Bourgeoisie, and is not a general, and is an op- 
portunist; at least he might be considered so be- 
cause he was in the Carranza Ministry, and has 
now attached himself to the Obregon, which is a 
rare occurrence in this country. Howbeit, Pani 
fits his post very well, he is a suave diplomat, and 
can talk a few languages. I confided to him that 
I am not going ofif to Los Angeles on Monday, 
having just been offered a trip to the Tampico oil 
fields. He agreed it was well worth doing. De la 
Huerta offered to facilitate mv visit to Villa, but 
I have not time to do both so I have chosen oil. 
232 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Pani was charming to me, said that whatever I 
wanted of Mexico he would have done for me, and 
he hoped to see me in New York when "things are 
settled." 

When I got back to the Hotel, a man walked 
into the patio, with a bunch of flowers. It was a 
bunch that could hardly get in at the door, and the 
flowers were of every color and variety. There 
were exclamations of admiration from the people 
sitting around, as from me also, and then I was told 
it was for me, the sender was Don Adolfo de la 
Huerta. It was so big and so beautiful, I laid it on 
a table in the middle of my sitting room, and felt 
that I was at my own funeral, but at least enjoy- 
ing it. A Mexican bunch is a wonderful thing, a 
great work of art. The flowers are wired and 
tied. Some on long sticks according to the design 
— It produces a wonderful effect, but they cannot 
be kept alive unless the whole construction is 
picked to pieces, and then oftentimes it is dis- 
covered the stems are too short to put in water. My 
flowers were roses, dahlias, choisias, magnolia, 
tuberose and violets, the two latter rescued and put 
in water. Then I sat down and wrote to de la 
Huerta, and told him exactly what I thought of 
him, straight from my heart. 

Saturday, August 6, 192 1. Mexico City. 
I was lent a car, which called at the Hotel at 

233 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

6:00 A.M. We did not start till seven, and it was 
cold, ever so cold, but the road was beautiful. I 
repeated the expedition to El Desirto and having 
started early got there before the rains. El 
Desirto is the ruin of a Carmelite Convent. It is 
a huge rambling place "in the desert" quite isolated 
on the mountainside amid the woods. It is very 
beautiful, but I thought dismal and damp. A 
Mexican man and boy, armed us with candles, 
led us down through underground passages and 
cells that were very extensive and dripping from 
the vaulted roofs . . . Dick loved it, but I was glad 
to be back in the sunlight. It must be a curious 
sensation to be a nun or a monk, to live secluded 
from the world, in peace and calm, and to have 
no further anxiety (unless it be about one's soul — ) 
and to be content with the daily round, the menial 
work. I suppose it requires great belief and no 
imagination. We came back down the mountain, 
stopping to pick wild flowers, and at a village we 
found a housc that gave us hot milk, for which we 
were thankful. Then we pursued our way along a 
road whence came the endless procession of men, 
women and boys, carrying their abnormal loads 
into town for sale. It led us through a valley some 
miles further in among the hills, and we paused 
on a hillside in the sun, to eat our combined break- 
fast and lunch. From our selected spot we viewed 
about a mile of road, and it made a curious im- 

234 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

pression upon one (as de la Huerta would have 
wished). This never ceasing steady stream of 
human beasts of burden! It suggested the evacua- 
tion of a town by refugees, carrying all they could 
take away. 

Dick, gathering bunches of wild penstimon was 
joined by two little Indian girls. One could not 
have been more than three years old. She wore a 
single garment of coarse linen. It reached nearly 
to her little barefeet, was sleeveless and cut in a 
big square decollete. She had the loveliest little 
face, huge eyes and regular features . . . and as she 
crushed a big bunch of long stemmed penstimon 
in her arms, as if it might have been a baby, she 
made a picture that one longed to preserve. But a 
sadness overwhelmed me at the thought that these 
little young things on the flowery hillside were sur- 
veying their destiny, as it passed along the road 
below them. They had been born into a world 
where early in life, they would be bent double, 
by the burden back and front, of merchandise and 
baby, and there would seem to be no escape. "Why 
do they submit?" was the question that kept rising 
in my heart. Why does man, woman or child sub- 
mit; and then I imagined myself in their place, 
and I got the answer: If my father had always 
done it, and my mother whilst she bore me, and my 
father's father and mother, and my mother's, 
and my brother already accompanied them, and 

235 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the neighbors went too, and they talked pantingly 
as they started off together, or rested at the wayside 
places, then I who was young enough to be left 
behind, (and not so young as to be a burden that 
must be carried with them) , I would know that my 
life would not always be one of watching, or of 
gathering flowers. When everyone is doing it, and 
it is in your tradition and in your environment, 
there is a submission to conditions that no one 
would dream of breaking. 

We went for a walk along a stream, out of view 
of the saddening road, and our path was a mosaic 
of flowers, and the shrubs and trees grew in such a 
way that it might have been a carefully planted 
and tended English rock garden. 

At seven o'clock Mr. Rubio came to see me. Sent 
by de la Huerta. He was accompanied by a well 
known writer called Velazquez, who is also a poet. 
Rubio delivered into my hands a photograph from 
the Minister; it was inscribed in a way that only 
the Spanish language lends itself to. Apparently 
he was pleased by my letter. I had said that I ap- 
preciated his personality and his aims, that a few 
more people of his calibre in the world, and there 
would be less of suffering for the masses. Rubio 
says that everything was arranged for General 
Calles to come and see me last Thursday at seven, 
but that at five, they telephoned he had been taken 
suddenly ill, in his office. He has been ill ever 
236 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

since. I had already heard the rumor that he 
had been poisoned. Rubio asked why I was leav- 
ing so quickly. I explained Dick was not well. I 
did not explain that I had finished my work. To 
all appearance I have not had any! 

A letter has just come from the President's Sec- 
retary, inviting Dick and me to Chapultepec at 
five on Monday. 

Monday, August 8, 1921. Mexico City. 

Our last day in Mexico City, we ended up our 
riding school lessons (which we have had nearly 
every day since we've been here) by starting out 
across country at 10 o'clock A.M. I never en- 
joyed anything so much. We went through Cha- 
pultepec Park then out across the fields and gal- 
loped. Jumping a ditch Dick came off, but he was 
not a bit frightened and with good presence of 
mind clung to the reins and landed on his feet. Had 
he fallen, he might have been kicked by the horses 
scrambling up the bank. I was very pleased with 
him. Most of the rest of the day was spent pack- 
ing, writing little notes of thanks and farewell and 
dropping them. 

At five o'clock, Dick and I drove to Chapultepec 
Castle in the face of a blinding rain and thunder 
storm, which followed after a dust storm. And 
oh ! it was cold. 

.When we got to the Castle it was very difficult 

237 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to make anyone understand that I wasn't a tourist, 
and that I had an appointment to see the President. 
One of them argued with me that what was the 
use, the President couldn't speak English, and I 
couldn't speak Spanish. I wrote my name on a 
piece of paper and gestured to him to "take it" — 
which he finally did, without further protest. We 
were then asked to follow upstairs, and were shown 
into the reception room that is entered from the 
roof garden. We waited and waited, and mean- 
while Dick, who had heard about the President 
having lost an arm plied me with questions about 
war. Was war a thing that we had always with 
us, and would he go to it when he grew up? I 
found it extremely difficult to tell. 

Finally Obregon came in, very pleasantly and 
smilingly, but we couldn't talk, only a few words 
such as concerned Dick's age. I said he was five, 
because I didn't know what six was in Spanish. I 
understood he was expecting an interpreter, but no 
interpreter came, although we wasted three quar- 
ters of an hour, during which time he was in and 
out of the room, restless and expectant. The chil- 
dren came in, Alvaro and Alvarada, aged two and 
four, and when the President left the room, Dick 
and the boy, who had eyed each other silently, be- 
gan to turn summersaults. Alvaro did it first, and 
then the damask sofa cushions went on to the floor, 
and when the President returned the children were 
238 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

standing on their heads, and coming down onto 
the parquet floor with a thud of heels. He laughed 
heartily. I then went out onto the f reezingly cold 
roof terrace to see if that interpreter was coming — 
instead, I beheld Pani, smiling as usual. I was 
glad to see him ... I told him our plight and how 
difficult it was . . . Pani however had come on 
business, and he and the President were closeted 
for some time. When he came out, we all went 
down stairs to the front door, piled into a car, were 
driven a few paces through the pouring rain across 
the courtyard, to another door. Here he went 
down a spiral stair, it was very mysterious and 
quaint — it led to the living apartments of the Obre- 
gons. The rooms were smaller and it certainly 
was more habitable. Madame Obregon met us at 
the foot of the stairs. She is one of those simple 
pretty young Mexican women, grown fat pre- 
maturely (though in this case, as an infant is due 
in October, there is some excuse . . .) a woman 
devoted to her husband and her children and her 
home. She told me she had three children already, 
two, three and four years old. She asked about 
mine, and I told her and we discussed Dick — food 
and internal ailments. She talks American-English 
very well. We sat in a small room. It had a table 
in the middle and chairs all around. In the middle 
of the table was a silver flute-shaped vase of flow- 
ers on a Mexican flag "doyley" ... On the floor, 

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in between the chairs, were large spittoons, quite 
useful for cigarette ends. Dick dropped his cake 
into one and roared with laughter. The little two 
year old girl sat down in her little baby arm chair 
and was given milk out of a baby's bottle. I asked 
Mrs. Obregon if she wanted a boy or a girl. She 
wanted a girl, but her husband she said wanted 
another boy. He did not like girls, they had such 
a hard time in the world he said. 

I thought of Mexican girls, and agreed — yet if 
the girl is born across the border of American 
citizenship, how different. How near and yet how 
far is emancipation for the Mexican girl. 

I was at the castle an hour and a half altogether. 
The President had the use of Pani, or of his wife 
as interpreters if he wished. But he said nothing 
interesting, and asked nothing. I have an explana- 
tion for this in my own mind: In Mexico it is not 
easy for a woman to be taken seriously. In Eng- 
land, in the States and especially in Russia (where 
among the Intellectuals woman is on a perfect 
equality with men) it is natural that clever men 
should think it worth while to talk to a woman on 
subjects of mutual interest. But in Mexico woman 
is on such a different plane. I am told for instance 
that a ''feminist movement" exists, but consists 
barely of 50 women! For the rest, they are the 
very carefully guarded mothers of families, and 
utterly submissive in spirit. I shall never forget 
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the way Madame Pani asked me, the day I lunched 
there: "Are you here in our country all alone . . .?" 
Who in the world did she think I would be with. 
...? 

Tuesday, August 9, 1921. 
Wednesday, August 10, 1921. 

Two days, one night and a half night getting 
from Mexico to Tampico. We had a "salon" and 
so were not too uncomfortable. Personally I 
rather enjoy the incident of travel and in Mexico 
one usually does not travel without adventure. 
Usually one derails. On this occasion we just 
stopped (with a great jerk) for a couple of hours 
because our engine's piston-rod broke. It was a 
bleak and dusty place where maize grew and not 
much fun. We next stopped because an oil box 
was on fire, but that did not delay us greatly, finally 
we stopped two more hours because the train in 
front had derailed. We walked up the line to see 
what had happened, the engine was back on the 
rails, and a good many Indians were at work mend- 
ing the track. I looked at the lines with an igno- 
rant unprofessional eye, and then I asked questions 
. . .: Should the wooden sleepers be rotten and 
splitting? Should the screws be entirely missing 
where two lines were riveted together? Should 
"pins" stick up half an inch? and then I watched 
the efforts of four men at the "points" trying to 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

close the lines. They pulled at levers, and finally 
hammered the line into place! This Railway is 
owned by American shareholders, and the Mexi- 
can Government has not given it back yet, because 
it cannot pay the damages for the deterioration it 
has suffered at their hands. Meanwhile it deteri- 
orates more every day, and I suppose each train 
that passes renders the track more dangerous than 
the last. During this interval, Dick, who found a 
pool in a ditch went into bathe. It was a muddy 
pool where cattle drink. Dick took ofif all his 
clothes and swam in it. Afterwards the sun quickly 
dried him and on our way back to the train we 
called on an Indian lady who stood at her home 
door. She was old. Her home was made trans- 
parently of irregular bamboo sticks, oddments of 
dried palmleaf and some sacking. The roof was 
thatched, the floor was mud. Two planks, raised 
each on four wooden poles with a piece of matting 
on the top were the beds for herself and her hus- 
band. A primitive cooker, some terra-cotta cook- 
ing utensils, and "Our Lady of Guadalupe" in one 
corner, were the entire contents. Whatever money 
they earned they spent neither on clothes nor house. 
Perhaps it went entirely on food. I have seen 
worse in Ireland. But in a country where the 
climate is kind (we were some considerable dis- 
tance from Mexico City) a thatched roof is almost 
all one needs. Life under those conditions offers 
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little, but demands less. From this place the train 
went rapidly down hill, winding back and forth 
round the mountain sides. We were in the rear 
coach and could see our engine going round hair- 
pin curves, and disappearing into tunnels! The 
views, which were a mix up of Switzerland and 
Italy, excelled both. The most beautiful I've ever 
seen. Too beautiful to take in. One felt humbled 
and awed. At one place, as the train came round 
the bend of a mountain, we came in sight of a 
river that cascaded for about half a mile into the 
valley below. I exclaimed: "Why can't one live 
in the beautiful spots of the Earth, instead of see- 
ing them as one passes by?" And I decided that I 
would not, if I could help it, leave Mexico until I 
had managed somehow to return to this place to 
live for a month, however primitively, if it were 
possible to arrange it. 

At all the stations where we stopped there was 
the ever present crowd of vendors offering excellent 
cold chicken, hard boiled eggs, hot fried potatoes, 
cakes and breads of every description, of all kinds 
of fruits, for almost nothing, — coffee, pulque, 
lemonade and beer to drink. At some of the min- 
ing stations one could buy small polished opals for 
a peso each (if one bargained) carved and colored 
walking sticks, Indian made toys and doll's furni- 
ture. Baskets of good shape woven with colors 
that were a real temptation ! Blind beggars played 

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music and sang songs. At one station, a blind boy 
with a harp was led around by his mother (a grey- 
haired Indian woman of great dignity of counte- 
nance) he played and sang about 500 verses of the 
Peons ballad to Villa! Towards the end we all 
knew the chorus well enough to join in, and the 
train finally unable to wait any longer steamed 
away, leaving him still monotonously singing the 
ballad to Villa! 

When the train stopped out in the wild country 
side, the track was alive with myriad butterflies of 
every size and color, especially brimstone ones. It 
looked like an allegorical picture of Spring. 

We arrived in Tampico about two A.M. on the 
second night. 

Thursday, August ii, 1921. Tampico. 

When I came down to breakfast in the morning, 
I did not recognize the quiet empty Hotel that I 
had entered in the small hours of the night. The 
hall was thronged with white suited, sombrero'd 
men, gun on hip. They were every type and age. 
There was not a single woman in the crowd. I 
thought I had dropped into a film play. Look- 
ing out into the sunlit streets small buildings met 
my gaze, an open fronted restaurant opposite, and 
barber shops full of men reclining in dental chairs 
at the mercy seemingly of someone engaged in cut- 
ting their throats. Dick asked me nervously, "What 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

arc they doing to that poor man . . .?" and I ex- 
plained they would do it to him some day. Every- 
thing seemed open to the street. It was hot, divinely 
hot. Sitting still in the shade with no exertion, 
one had to mop one's forehead. For the first time 
in my life I am comfortably warm, and Dick half 
clad, and protesting against the condition of his 
body has nevertheless recovered his color, his ap- 
petite, and his mischievous eye. In the evening we 
took a tram (overcrowded with a motly collection 
of workers) to a place half an hour away, called 
"Miramar," Here Dick and Louise bathed in the 
surf. I felt I had been very superior (instead of 
lazy) for looking on, when they came out black 
with the oil which floats on the water. They had 
to take gasoline shower at the bath house to get 
clean! The sunset sky was very lovely, but the 
little wavelets that break on the beach, instead of 
being ripples of foam, were heavy dark and slug- 
gish. 

I have said that everything is open to the street: 
I include at night a quarter of the town where 
ladies sit outside their open lit up doorways, dis- 
playing a big bedded small room inside. These 
houses are almost standardised, varying only in the 
manner of their lights. Some preferring pink, to 
the cruder unshaded electric globe. From within 
the dancing saloons came the sound of music. 
Ladies fanned themselves at the door. Some had 

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black hair and faces powdered ashen white. But 
the prevalent taste seemed for auburn hair, some 
color, and a bright pink dress. One or two in 
night attire were completely and transparently 
silhouetted in their doorways. The streets in this 
district being thronged, there is perfect traffic 
superintendence, and the tramcar has its terminus 
in this very midst. Everything in this respect 
being made easy for the tourist. 

From the first moment I felt Tampico is a town 
for men. 

Friday, August 12, 1921. Tampico. 

We started off in the morning in our riding 
clothes for a two days' trip across the oil fields. 
There is no railway, and one might almost say 
there are no roads to take one over the 80 kilo- 
meters to the little "boom oil town" of Zacamixtle 
where the oil wells are. 

Happily it was dry and hot when we started off, 
passing first of all through the camps and tanks of 
the Huesteca Oil Company, which is Doheny's. 
Wherever the Huasteca has oil stations the roads 
in that vicinity are good, and the houses of the 
engineers and employees are well built and nicely 
situated, lawned and planted, in strong contrast to 
the surrounding jungle, and the Indian grass huts 
and their squalor. 

Every twenty kilometers along the way, there 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

is a camp, most of these are built by the Founda- 
tion Company, a firm that builds railways, that 
lays pipelines, or restores Cathedrals. There seems 
to be in fact no building job in the world that the 
Foundation Company does not take on! 

At these camps there are steam heated coils to 
heat the oil and thin it so that it passes more read- 
ily through the pipe line and gigantic pumps to 
urge it along its course. All of which was a great 
surprise to me, as I thought the oil flowed by grav- 
ity from the wells to the tank ships ! Our road dis- 
played at intervals rows of pipes of various sizes, 
mostly belonging to separate companies, and the 
spirit of competition was in the atmosphere even 
of the jungle. Here and there where a pipe had 
leaked, a black oil pool had oozed through to the 
surface. In places, such a leakage had rotted the 
road and made it impassable, so that one had to 
drive in a detour through the shrub. We went 
through every kind of scenery, but the woods, of 
which there were miles and miles, were luxuriant- 
ly tropical. I never saw such a variety of flowers, 
and bush. There were gnarled tall trees on the 
stems of which scarlet orchids had seeded them- 
selves, and from the branches of which dry grey 
moss hung down in long festoons. This moss is a 
particular industry for the peasants, who use it to 
stuff their mattresses. We lunched at Camp 80, in 
a wooden mosquito-protected building, where the 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

primitive, hardworking Americans gave of their 
hospitality. The roads having been indescribable, 
and the car ill sprung, the day sweltering hot, we 
were tired and hungry. Dick humiliated me by 
complaining loudly that the omelette was only 
"skin" and had no inside. It certainly was not the 
omelette of a French chef, and I was surprised that 
Dick knew what an omelette should be like. He is 
shaping into the proverbial Englishman, who cares 
what he eats. After lunch I gave him a lecture on 
manners, and on the art of accepting hospitality, 
threatening as I did so not to take him with me on 
my next trip to Russia! 

At 4:30 wd dined, washed and rested before 
pushing onto Zacamixtle. This bit of the trip in 
the dark was the roughest of all. The roads were 
worse and wet. We got stuck in a village street, 
the mud being above the axle, and up hill. We had 
to be pulled out by another car. 

For miles one could see the flaring sky and one 
expected to come upon the wells at the crest of 
each hill, yet ever there seemed to be another hill 
between us and the lighted sky. Finally, at a bend 
in the road, we came upon the full glory of it. 
Great flares 10 or 12 feet high rising from stand- 
ards, where they have burned day and night for 
years. This being the method of disposing of the 
superfluous gases, which might so easily be put to 
a useful purpose. But with the wild scramble to 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

make money out of the liquid "black gold" no one 
has time to think of utility or waste, or even of or- 
ganization. There is no fraternity in "the fields," 
no sense of comradeship, no co-operation, no idea 
of spending anything on the bit of land that has 
given so much. There prevails one idea, and that 
of making as much gold as possible in the shortest 
space of time, and getting away with it. 

These hillsides in the dusk with their silhouettes 
of drilling towers, of palm trees and grass thatched 
bamboo huts, added to which the sickly smell of 
oil, have furnished palaces to men who once had 
nothing and diamond crowns to women, and given 
them the power of kings and queens. The mud 
and chaos, the breathless energy and human striv- 
ing, have enriched men and women beyond all 
dream. 

But today, the world being saturated in the 
blood of bankrupting war, the demand for oil has 
enormously subsided, nor can the price be paid. 
The golden liquid has sunk temporarily to an 
eighth of its value of eight months ago. Neverthe- 
less there is no respite in the oil fields. The oil 
can be stored, the oil producers can afford to wait. 
So new towers grow up, new holes are bored. Down 
into the bowels of the earth 1800 feet below sea 
level the great metal shaft is drilled with the full 
force of its 4,000 pounds weight until it bores 
through into the illusive river of oil that flows way 

249 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

down. Albeit in the harbor a few ships only await 
its flow to carry it to the four corners of the earth, 
the oil is being caught and caged, forced, heated, 
pumped and rushed along as before. In fact, 
more pipe lines and more giant tanks are being 
hurriedly built, so that the oil can wait in store 
until the markets of the world have recovered. So 
they hurry, hurry, bore and build and store, for the 
"day" of oil will come again as surely as the sun 
rises over the mountains. Has not Lloyd George 
said what he will do to the British coal miners now 
on strike, when he has accumulated and organized 
oil for fuel as a coal substitute? The world needs 
oil, will always need oil, will need more and more 
oil, oil crude and oil refined. So get it, keep it, 
hold it, — hurry. . . . 

But how do the pipes, the boilers, the tanks and 
the camps, the provisions and the materials get to 
the fields? What is this super-human effort to 
achieve the seemingly impossible? Why is there 
not a pause for breath, a respite from the rush, why 
is there no co-operation among the companies? 
There is so much fraternity among workers, why 
not among employers? A very few months and 
just a little of this quickly made gold would suffice 
to achieve a common road for the common wel- 
fare, or to build a railway, and obviate this strug- 
gle of hired humans to extricate machinery from a 
bog. Here for instance, is a small stretch of road, 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

called "private." It can close its gates to a dozen 
cars that have struggled and bumped and sweated 
through miles of morass. It is called the Aguila, 
because that company built it, and when it rains 
they close the gate to preserve the roads' condition. 
What then — ? Aguila's cars can get through, but 
the Corona, Dutch Shell, Mexican and others can 
well go back and struggle through a longer hellish 
way. It was ten o'clock of the night when we 
made Zacamixtle, and a room was given to us in 
the stafif house. A little clean bare wooden room, 
with a thin screen partition between us and the 
noisy card playing party on the other side. Two 
beds, for Dick, Louise and myself. I left them 
and went out to see the town. I went in a car, 
escorted and protected. The town looked like the 
Chinese towns I have seen in pictures. Some 
wooden sheds, some open stores, thatched bamboo 
huts and in one street there was life, — the rest was 
dark. We looked into saloons whence came the 
sound of music. In one there was a gambling table 
and a crowd, we passed on. The other was more 
full of sound and movement. We went in, took 
the table that was offered us, and ordered drinks. 
In breeches and boots I was conspicuous, the other 
women being half naked half-castes. The men 
were tall, strong, clear-featured American boys, in 
big sombrero's, blue shirts open at the throat, 
breeches, mud and oil bespattered, and revolver in 

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belt. They danced a perfect fox trot, to music by 
four men on an instrument that looked like a spinet, 
but sounded like a xylophone. A man came up to 
our table and asked me if I was from Minneapolis. 
I was about to explain that I came from London, 
and had never seen Minneapolis when my protec- 
tor intervened sharply with a rebuke that made the 
Minneapolis man apologize and retreat. I was 
rather resentful at his being so summarily snubbed, 
for after all he had, as he said, thought he had met 
me in Minneapolis. Another man at the next table, 
drinking his beer out of the bottle, tipped it up 
for the last dregs, and as he did so turned round to 
me and when the bottle was drained said "Hullo I" 
He wasn't very sober and I disregarded him. Sud- 
denly my protector went up to him threateningly 
and there were words. As the evening advanced 
the scene became indescribable. There were Mexi- 
cans and there were Chinese in the saloon, and 
fragments of the conversation are unrepeatable. The 
two best dressed women in the room became con- 
spicuous. The one in scarlet chiffon, who leaning 
against the wall had slept, heavily drugged, woke 
up bad tempered, and took off her white slipper 
to beat the man on the head who spoke to her. The 
one in pink chiffon sang noisily as she sat on a 
man's knee. There was a white cotton stocking 
kept up by a mauve garter, and a hiatus of brown 
skin between the stocking and the chifTon dress. 
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All the women with white shoes were mud covered 
and trodden on. Our chauffeur sat at our table, 
and attached to himself a highly painted, cynical 
faced broad-bosomed dancer. She joined us and 
her conversation with him was translated to me 
in an undertone. At one o'clock there being scarce 
any one sober in the room, and the chiffon gowns 
having caught their prey and left, we left too. 

My impression as I look back, in spite of all the 
dirt and drunkenness, is of young Americans of 
fine material, hard working and full of grit and 
infinitely superior to their conditions of life. These 
are the men and such are their surroundings, who 
give their best years for the benefit of the oil share- 
holders. 

Saturday, August 13, 1921. Zacamixtle. 

We were awakened at 6 :oo A.M. by the sound of 
men whistling as they dressed, and finally the 
gramaphone on the other side of the partition 
played "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and I got 
up, looked around for water to wash in. Outside 
on the verandah (where the men have their wash- 
stand!) I found it in gasoline tins. We had 
breakfast at the "dining room" to which we 
motored across an open muddy space. The break- 
fast, fried eggs, dried bacon, tinned butter, and 
canned milk was excellent, after which we started 
homeward, with a feeling of great appreciation 

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for the simple hospitality of these splendid, hard- 
working men. They had not much to offer, and it 
is rare indeed that a woman intrudes upon their 
lives (I believe only about five have done so) but 
they offer ungrudgingly all they have and make 
one welcome. I felt badly that two people had 
been obliged to give up their room to me for the 
night, and never learnt who they were to thank 
them. 

Passing by daylight the hills with their drilling 
towers that we had only seen dimly the night be- 
fore made of the journey a new one. 

As we passed through Amatlan we stopped, and 
got out into the mud to photograph lot 162. This 
is the hillside with the twelve drilling towers, "der- 
ricks" as they are called. 162 is the most prolific 
lot. It was at this point that the field was threat- 
ened by the recent fire, and it is estimated that from 
500,000 to a million barrels of oil were lost. I was 
interested to hear how an oil well on fire can be 
extinguished, but in order to understand, we first 
stopped at the Huasteca well, known as Amatlan 
No. 6, in lot 228, and watched it being drilled. They 
had reached a depth of 1700 feet and expected to 
strike oil at about 2,000 feet. A well is drilled by 
means of a bit. As the hole is bored in, it is filled 
up by steel casing pounds up and down, worked 
by a wooden wheel. When a depth of 1800 feet 
below sea level is reached in a proven territory, the 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

gas is encountered and the drillers know they will 
soon strike the oil. After drilling through the 
final strata, the oil dome is reached at about 2,000 
feet below sea level. When the well "comes in" 
the drillers first let her "clean herself out." This 
means that the gas is allowed to flow freely out of 
the well. With the roar and rush of gas come 
pebbles and stones, in many cases with sufficient 
force to throw the drilling tools out of the hole, 
and wreck the derrick. The gas is very inflamma- 
ble and not even an automobile is allowed to pass 
within a radius of 300 metres during an in-coming 
of a well. After the tools are thrown out, a great 
black spray of oil comes up, and then the well is 
"in." 

The difficult part is closing in jthe well. A 
valve is set on the casing with a stem about 30 feet 
running at right angles to the casing, and usually 
the wheel that turns the valve steam is covered by 
a small hut. A pressure gauge indicates the pres- 
sure of the oil, and from this the engineers calcu- 
late the estimated daily flow. 

When the big fire was raging in Amatlan, the 
only method of closing the well was to tunnel to 
the casing, cut the casing and insert a valve so as to 
shut off the supply of oil that was feeding the flame. 
This was accomplished by one man, who, by means 
of an asbestos suit, and tunnel, successfuly accomp- 
lished the greater part of the work himself. It 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

is claimed that the Oil Companies had about 5,cxx) 
men at work, throwing up earthen dykes to prevent 
a spread. 

Craving for information, with the earnest desire 
of the ignorant person to become knowledgable, 
I asked if the oil from these wells reached its base 
through common pipe carriers, as in the United 
States. But this is not the case here. Each in- 
dividual company runs its pipe lines at enormous 
expense, a procedure which is well afforded by 
the big companies, but which is paralyzingly detri- 
mental to the smaller ones. Only the very rich can 
afford the luxury of enriching themselves. 

From Amatlan we proceeded some miles, to the 
great crater known as Las Bocas, which took fire 
and burnt for nine years. In those days the means 
of extinguishing a burning oil well had not been 
evolved. The narrow neck had burnt and burnt 
until it had converted itself into a crater the size of 
a lake. From the surface of the sluggish waters, 
gas was still rising and the water bubbling and 
hissing in eddies. All round the crater the trees 
stood grey and lifeless, as in some districts of the 
battlefields in France. This, as in France, being 
caused by poisonous gas which has killed all vege- 
tation, and left a wood standing like a bare skele- 
ton. 

Near this place we met a native, with a gun 
dragging along a baby coyote. He had wounded it 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

in the hind legs, and the animal unable to walk, was 
being towed along the ground by means of a wil- 
low branch tied round its neck. We asked the 
man why he did not kill it. He answered that he 
wanted to bring it "alive to the village, to show to 
the people." We argued that it was dying. The 
native was smiling and unmoved. We offered him 
a peso to shoot it immediately. He continued to 
smile. We offered him five pesos, he remained un- 
moved. "It will be dead in an hour, and you will 
be without your five pesos." But he smilingly went 
on his way, dragging the bulging eyed, panting, 
dying baby coyote with its limp broken legs. It 
wasn't that he was cruel, he was merely a brute 
with no understanding. 

We pushed on to the camp known as Kilometer 
40, for lunch, and here, one of the first things they 
showed me in the Superintendent's quarters, was a 
Hearst magazine of July 12th, with a review and 
long quotation of Clare Sheridan's Russian diary 
with photographs of self, with right and lefts of 
Lenin and Trotzky! I was sure well known by 
the staff at this point. 

During our trip from Kilometer 40 to Kilometer 
80, we passed the worst of the road, and I counted 
six cars bogged! The same fate did not befall us, 
because we had an extremely brilliant driver, but 
we had to halt for some time owing to the stoppage 
congestion. The car in front of us contained a 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Mexican family moving — on the back of their 
car, uncaged, sat a little green parrot. It looked 
so wise and talked so much and laughed heartily. 
It sat on my shoulder for some time and stroked my 
cheek with its yellow head, and said things to me 
in Spanish. And when I answered it in English, 
it put its head on one side and with the most en- 
trancing Latin accent said "Right-o!" I made 
up my mind that I must have a parrot, a green one 
with a yellow head. They grow wild here. 

The trip was without further incident until we 
reached Kilometer 80, where we had a bucket full 
of lemonade and some thick cheese sandwiches and 
from there in the dark we made for the Huasteca 
Terminal, crossed the river in a motor and got back 
to Tampico about 9:30 P.M. 

During these two days, I passed through the oil 
wells of the following companies, operating in the 
Southern fields : 

Huasteca Petroleum Company (Doheny Company). 
Mexican Eagle, for what is known 'in Mexico as 
"Cid Mexicana de Petroleo, El Aguola" (English 
interests). 

La Corona, or what is known in Mexico as "N. V. 
Petroleum Maatschappij La Corona" (Royal Dutch Shell 
— Dutch Interest). 

Mexican Gulf Oil Co. (Mellon Bros., Pittsburgh). 
Island Oil Company (Leach & Co.). 
International Petroleum Company (John Hays Ham- 
mond). 

The Texas Company. 

Transcontinental Petroleum Company (owned by the 
Standard Oil Company — J. D. Rockefeller). 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Sunday, August 14, 1921. Tampico. 

Spent ten hours on a small cabin launch going 
up the Panuco River and the Tamesi with which it 
junctions. At the ranch on Don Juan del Rio we 
stopped to bathe. It was very hot and very beauti- 
ful. We passed miles and miles of banana plan- 
tations and Indians in their frail overloaded "dug- 
outs" who signalled to us to slow up for fear our 
"wash" would swamp them. Arm chairs and awn- 
ings were prepared for us, but with colored glasses 
to protect my eyes, I preferred sitting up in the 
ship's bow all day in full glare of the sun. It beat 
down upon me, it burnt me, mercilessly, splendid- 
ly. I felt as if all the cold and fogs of England's 
winters that had seemed so long, all the spring- 
times of England that had failed, all the sum- 
mers of England that had been a disappointment, 
and all the autumns that had eaten damp into the 
marrow of my bones, were being burnt and 
branded and cauterized. 

Monday, August 15, 192 1. Tampico. 

We left Tampico by automobile for the Panuco 
oil field, and when we reached a point about 20 
kilometers east of Panuco we had to abandon our 
auto in a bog and walk. Our luggage consisted of 
a gun, two kodaks, three coats and a heavy money 
bag which we have never dared to leave out of 
sight. The chauffeur when we abandoned him to 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

his car, had assured us that Panuco was four miles 
away, "Just over the hill." We started trustingly 
and full of energy, two kilometers rough walking 
over the sunbeaten shadeless plain was a bad start. 
We were overcome with thirst and Dick had to be 
carried on our backs in turn. The heat of the 
sun seemed to increase, the Kodaks became a curse, 
the coats a mockery. We sweated and limped and 
panted over the plain, and up the hill in the merci- 
ful shade of trees to the crest. No human habita- 
tion however was visible; down the hill we went 
and up the next. Still no sign, yet another hill. 
Dick became peevish and complaining, everyone 
too tired to carry him, and the springs in the hol- 
lows all dried up. At the foot of the third hill there 
was a junction of four primitive roads. Our guide 
left us in a heap, at the crossroads, gun loaded and 
full cock and with orders not to shoot at sight, but 
only on provocation, and he went in search of 
water. I took from my trouser pocket my little 
jade god, the one that looks like Trotzky and is 
2000 years old. He is supposed to be the god who 
protects one from thirst. I stood him up in the 
sand and I begged him to send water. "Are you a 
curse or a blessing?" I asked him. ''Never before 
have I carried you on me, never have I suffered 
from such thirst — be kind and send us, send us 
water!" 

Half an hour later, when the sun was setting, 
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we heard a distant sound of steps and voices and 
there our guide came running towards us, and a 
native boy with a bucket at his side. We all three 
got up and ran to meet him, ran stumblingly and 
speechlessly. 

"Shut your eyes while you drink it . . ." we were 
told. Womanlike, I looked, it was brown muddy 
opaque rainwater washed down from the hills . . . 
we drank — and drank, one of us coughed up a 
small live fish, spat it out and drank again. Never 
ever had any drink tasted so good! And where 
was Panuco? Where the Corona Camp? 15 min- 
utes away, said the native boy. 

"Come and show us . . ." 

He would not. 

"Five — ten pesos if you will lead us. . . ." 

"No I must milk the cows." 

"The cows won't hurt for thirty minutes. . . ." 

"It is getting night. . . ." 

"You can find your way in the dark." 

"My father is out. . . ." 

We followed the direction he pointed out — we 
passed the Salvasuchi, Tampuche, Temante and 
Isleta fields. We passed them, I did not see them, 
my eyes were glued to the track, picking my way, 
and my mind concentrated on the effort of "getting 
along." A little brandy, and even Dick shouted 
"no" when asked if we were downhearted. In the 
face of a lemon and sunset sky we were ferried in 

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a dugout across the Panuco River from the Tam- 
aulipas to the Vera Cruz side. An Indian at this 
juncture consented to escort us and carried our pos- 
sessions. He said it was only two kilometers more, 
but we seemed to walk for two more hours along 
the river bank, in single silent file, through maize 
or cotton up to our waists, or banana plantations 
over our heads. At least we were not thirsty, and 
the sun was no more. The fire-flies danced around 
and before us, and the moon rose up in all her 
glory, making shadows among the banana leaves. 
We started walking at 3 130, it was 9 130 when we 
tottered into the Corona camp and the Superin- 
tendent gave us his house for the night. The wife 
of one of the stafif took us to her house to give us 
supper. I remember vaguely the mental effort of 
trying to display normal appreciation of her kind- 
ness in egg frying. But before the eggs were on 
the table my head was in my plate and I w^as fast 
asleep. 

Tuesday, August 16, 1921. Corona Camp. 

My bed facing the open window on the river, 
where the sun was rising, waked me at five. I got 
up stiffly and dressed at once. Found my host on 
the verandah and had a little conversation with 
him. He was a Swiss, and we/' talked French. 
Round his neck was a great scar. I learned after- 
wards that he had been hung by order of Carranza 
262 



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and was cut down just in time before he could die. 
We breakfasted at six and our host drove us to the 
railway station, three kilometres away, where we 
caught the 6:30 train full of workingmen; among 
whom in appearance we seemed quite in keeping. 
Dick was rather sleepy and said he felt sick, but 
otherwise showed no signs of the strain of the night 
before. He may have been carried at most two 
kilometers, for the rest of 18 he had walked it gal- 
lantly, and (after the sun had gone down) uncom- 
plainingly. His powers of endurance before his 
sixth birthday made me extremely proud, and very 
hopeful of him. 

Wednesday, August 17, 1921. 

Got up at 5 130 A. M. Waked Louise and Dick, 
breakfasted at 6:15 and then proceeded in a car to 
catch the seven o'clock train. We started a little 
late and half way the car stopped in a perfectly 
deserted street. The panic and agitation in which 
I finally arrived at the station, to catch the only 
Mexico City express of the day is indescribable. 
My destination was not Mexico, but Micos, about 
ten hours away where I had contrived (as I 
planned) to camp by the falls. All the camp gear 
had gone on ahead, but waiting for me at the seven 
o'clock train were my four friends. Each of 
them director, superintendent, or some occupation 
of the sort in a Tampico firm. One an Irishman, 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

one a Scotchman, one a Canadian and the other a 
Mexican. They were arranging for me, and or- 
ganizing my camp, and joining it for a holiday. 
They greeted me at the station by the calming as- 
surance that although it was seven o'clock, the train 
would not leave for an hour. As a matter of fact 
it did not start for two hours and a half. I had 
gotten up at five to catch a train that left at 9:30. 
Meanwhile we were turned out of our compart- 
ment while it was hermetically sealed and fumi- 
gated — the enforced legislation for every train 
from a bubonic plague district. Dick walked 
around in the pouring' rain with a friend and 
bought a baby parrot without a cage. The flies 
were such as Tampico alone can boast. When we 
did start, the engine broke down six miles out. It 
was nightfall when we reached Micos, a primi- 
tive little country station, in the middle of a village 
street. Here we were met by one who had gone 
ahead to select our camp. He said he had not had 
time to get things fixed, and that meanwhile he 
was renting for us a house in the village. Leaving 
the others to go to the house I walked back along 
the railway line with the Irishman to view the 
falls, and select a site. It was not easy, as the bank 
goes sheer down from the railway to the falls and 
sheer up from the falls to the mountain top, both 
sides densely covered with virgin vegetation. In 
this place there are no roads, peasants load their 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

donkeys and mules and drive them along the single 
file tracks. There are no churches. The Spaniards 
never penetrated into this wilderness, the blood of 
the people is pure undiluted Indian. The railway 
has brought to them whatever they know of civi- 
lization. At the top of a stony track leading down 
to the valley, two natives, man and wife, bade us 
"Buenos Noches." We asked them where they 
lived. They pointed way down below to a thatched 
roof and in gallant native fashion "There is your 
house" they said to us, assuring us that if we 
pitched our camp there, we could get eggs, fresh 
milk, a child for Dick to play with, and moreover 
a boat, to ferry the river. We took some cigarettes 
from them and walked back, reaching our village 
house after nightfall. It stood on a bank above the 
railway. It was, of course, unfurnished. Three 
beds had been put in one room for Dick, Louise 
and myself. The walls were of dried mud, white- 
washed. The floor was of wet mud into which the 
legs of the bed sank unevenly. Our mosquito nets 
hung from a transparent ceiling of bamboo 
through which one could see the thatch. The next 
room was full of beds for our friends and across 
a patio, that was like the yard of a pig pen, we 
walked on duck boards to the kitchen and dining 
room. I slept with my front door wide open, the 
moon streaming in, the largest cockroach I have 
ever seen on the wall, and an upturned cube box 

265 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

next to me with my clock and Margaret's photo- 
graph. The conditions were so novel and inter- 
esting that one forgot the discomfort. Every man 
in the next room (there was an open doorway over 
which I hung a sheet for privacy) snored like two 
men each. The village dogs held concert in the 
night and woke up all the cocks. Two trains came 
in to the station whistling and the mountains re- 
echoed. The insects made an unceasing sound, as 
of machinery, and at five the next morning I got up. 

Thursday, August i8, 1921. Micos. 

The village consists of a main street, mud houses, 
thatched roofs and three 'open' stores, a 'cake shop' 
and a drinking house. At the store I bought 
leather sandals, straw hats, scarlet neckerchief, red 
fringed sash, loosely woven scarlet wool material 
by the yard and a six shooter. While thus absorbed 
an Indian fell through the doorway onto the floor, 
drunk. His face was pathetically imbecile. He 
pawed the air and emitted noises and grunts like 
a frightened animal. The storekeeper picked him 
up and led him gently out just so far as the cake 
store, and he tumbled headlong into that doorway. 

In the mire of the street stood two immovable 
oxen, a burro, dogs, chickens, pigs and tied up a 
door was a black shiney nosed big eyed gazelle, it 
had been lassoed and captured in the woods. 

It was a great day. The villagers were at their 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

doors watching the packing of our stuff onto i6 
mules; beds, matresses, stove, suit cases, stores. 
One mule gave a tremendous heave with his back 
and started off at full gallop down the street, scat- 
tering his pack on his way. He was caught and a 
red handkerchief tied over his eyes, a noose tied 
round his upper lip, and pulled tight, and he was 
repacked. 

Dick rode a thin burro with a Mexican saddle 
and stirrups that looked like tin cans, two Indian 
boys accompanied him: one to pull the burro and 
the other to push it. With the baby parrot under 
my arm I walked ahead of the cavalcade for two 
miles along the railway track. We expected a 
good deal of trouble, but only one mule fell over 
the embankment with a bed on his back, and had 
to be dragged up on the end of a rope by another. 
How they ever did the journey down the rocky 
footpath through the wood into the valley with- 
out mishap is a miracle. But they fetched up at 
the riverside in perfect order and were there un- 
loaded, while a bridge was being built to enable 
the men to carry the stuff across the rapids. This 
took time, but two palm tree trunks eventually 
spanned the rapids to a small island, and from 
there a dugout ferried us across to the big island, 
which is our camp. 

At eight o'clock I went to bed dead tired, my 
bed was next to the tent flap, tied back so that the 

267 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

moon could shine in upon me, and I could look 
out and see the fire-flies. I fell asleep to the sound 
of water falls that roar like a great mill wheel oil' 
either side of the island. 

Sunday, August 21, 1921. At Camp. 

What is the use of describing it? 

I am never going to forget. It is mirror'd deep 
down into my soul, forever. And who else cares? 

I am so happy and so completely at peace. It 
is less than a year since I went to Russia, and it has 
been the fullest year of my life. During that year 
I have hardly at all been alone, and I am very 
very tired. 

Paece, (the most beautiful word in the English 
language) "the Peace that passeth all understand- 
ing" is mine at last 

When I die my Heaven will be like this. It 
will be warm and sunny, full of butterflies, flow- 
ers and water falling, water rushing and water 
pools that trickle. How I love water and the 
sound of it! I have found a little secluded place 
that I come to all alone. When I left the camp, 
crossing the river and the rapids, I walked half a 
mile and then I came to a wide shallow rivulet. 
Amidstream there is a tree and a big shady rock. I 
reach it by stepping stones. It is my castle. The 
stream tumbles from one pool into a lower one. 
The water is clear as crystal. I can see the shoal of 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

big trout as they swim together against the current. 
There seems to be a myriad butterflies of every 
description. They hover quite near me, as though 
they had never seen a human, and so were un- 
afraid. There is an irridescent one of sapphire 
blue as big as a bat. It is luminous in the sun- 
light, it dances around me tantalizingly like some 
great living jewel that I may not touch. I have 
heard of golden butterflies, but I thought it was 
an exaggeration of speech, but I have found one 
here. It settled on my foot and opened wide its 
wings, they seemed to have been cut out of gold 
tinsel and sewn together with an orange thread. 
On the branches of the tree over my head there 
are clumps of white orchids, and a pair of wild 
green parrots shriek noisily in their flight. I have 
loved spring days in England, with their mist of 
bluebells in the woods, and brimstone butterflies 
the color of the primroses, but this seasonless 
country, that has never known frost, this Heaven of 
eternal Sunshine and riot of beauty, is almost too 
wonderful to enjoy. It is as if one had picked all 
the best things from every corner of the Earth and 
put them here, and made a composition picture. 

Last night I came back by moonlight across the 
island among the sugar cane. In the distance the 
lights glimmered from our thatched roof beneath 
which, at the foot of the mountain, our tents are 
pitched. On one side of me were bamboo, palm 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

trees and tall feathery reeds and the moon caught 
the flat of the leaves and turned them to silver. I 
threw my arms out w^ide as though to embrace it 
all. I seemed not to be a mere stranger, a passer- 
by. I, who have no sense of "home" suddenly felt 
that I "belonged." My father had a ranch in Wy- 
oming before I was born, and perhaps something 
hitherto untouched had awakened in me. I have 
no sense of possession. I do not desire to own. I 
know that these mountains are as completely mine 
as some man's garden for which he has paid. I 
may climb the mountain, shoot, live, cut fuel, 
build a house, just as I may fish in the stream, 
build bridges over it, dam it, treat it in fact as 
though I had a title deed, but I do not feel that I 
own them so much as they own me. I belong 
here ... I do not belong to London, New York, 
Paris or Mexico City. I do not belong to people 
or to any social community. I belong to this gar- 
den that God has planted. This is not Mexico, 
it is just Arcady. It is not anywhere in particular, 
it is just a place "somewhere on God's Earth." I 
may live here all my life if I please. I can afford 
to live here without ever doing another day's 
work. I need make no further effort so long as I 
live. I need never worry about food, fuel, roof nor 
raiment. I need never again see the misery of 
civilization, the poverty, the crime, the sordid- 
ness, the ugliness. I need never hear of wars, and 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the sufferings of humanity. I have strayed into 
a garden of Peace. 

But Vasconselos said the truth: if humans are 
content, they are no better than the brutes, if they 
have imagination, they suffer always. And I 
know, that although I have found beauty and my 
dreams have been outdreamed, and although I 
have free choice, my decision will not keep me 
here. I know this may only be a rest by the way- 
side; that some day I must arise, strengthened, 
rested, and get back into the fray. I have an ani- 
bition, the task is set, I may not give up. This is 
selfindulgence. No one has a right to continue 
to live and leave no foot print. One may do some 
good, or one may do some harm, but one must do 
something in the w^orld, or forfeit the right to 

live. 

My children, what would they become, brought 
up "in Heaven?" It may not be. They have to 
pass through the maelstrom to become worthwhile. 

But this is good, surpassing good, and my heart 
is full of a deep gratitude. Perhaps some day 
when the work is done, my soul may rest in 
"Peace." 

In Camp — Date unknown. 

Our days pass, and our nights, and some nights 
are darker than others, otherwise they are all the 
same and no one of our days is less good than an- 

271 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

other. They vary only in the variety of our ex- 
peditions and every new place reveals a beauty 
equal to the first. This morning I allowed Dick 
to visit the secret place amidstream where I come 
to write. He took off his garment to bathe, and 
standing naked in the sun, on a rock above the 
waterfall, his body burnt brown, and, with his pet 
ant-eater round his neck, he looked the embodi- 
ment of Mowglie in Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle 
Book," the boy who was suckled by the she-wolf, 
and grew up in the woods, and could speak the 
language of the animals. 

Mowglie could look into the eyes of the Black 
Panther and make him blink and turn his head 
away. Mowglie defeated the Tiger, he led the 
wolves. Mowglie, the Man-cub, learned great wis- 
dom and philosophy from the jungle. This new 
primaeval life seems to have revealed something 
even to me. 

At this moment lying full length in the sun on 
my rock, I am out of sight, and well out of sound 
of any human (Oh! No I am not! Here comes an 
Indian — he is going to cross the stream — he has 
not seen me — he stops to sharpen his knife on a 
stone — he has cut a hazel switch — he has crossed 
the stream — he is gone — ) . . . 

I lie here contemplatively, and find myself say- 
ing: "If I were a man! . . ." It is revealed to me 
that to be a man must be a wonderful accident of 
272 




DICK SAILING HIS BATTLI':SHIP IX THE TURBULENT 
MEXICAN RIVEK 

(Photograph by Clare Sheridan) 



■^8 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

birth. To be the right kind of man is to be a 
king. Now to be a queen, one need not neces- 
sarily be the best kind of woman, and being a 
queen is not worth while anyway. Whereas to be 
a king means Power. "King by Divine Right." 
That defines the finest type of man. 

If I were a man: I mean young, sound of 
mind and limb, body well conditioned and 
muscled — indefatigable. Equipped mentally 
with a moral code and a sense of honor, and fear- 
less. I would feel that I could hold my own with 
anyone in the world. That I would not be un- 
fairly matched with any other physical force. 
That in the fight, in play, in competition, I had 
but to exert my capacity to the utmost to be sure 
of the issue. Though I were unendowed I would 
own the world. 

If I were a man, I would awake in the morn- 
ing, stretch my limbs and say :^ "Thank God!" 
When I was a girl, I wished I were a boy, and a 
man (I have never forgotten, though I was very 
young) said to me: "As wishing won't change 
you, you had better try to become the best kind of 
woman," but at best, what is to be a woman? 

My short hair and man's garb have temporarily 
added an aggressive personality to my six foot 
stature and my strength. But, at a turn in the 
road I am likely to meet a physical strength 
greater than my own, which in conflict would 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

utterly defeat me. The world is not mine, it is 
another's to whom I am obliged to entrust myself. 
I am a childbearer, and of what worth are my 
physical powers of endurance? 

I am a woman; I am vain, jealous, changeable, 
dependant, and ever must remain so. 

Oh God! I pray, in my next incarnation, make 
me the best kind of man, and meanwhile as a com- 
pensation give me the consolation of having made 
one. 

Mexico. In Camp. 

I have lost all track of days and dates. I get 
no papers, I receive no letters, no one knows where 
I am, I hardly can locate myself. 

It is a rough primitive life, and the situation 
necessitating a long walk on a hilly stony track 
with rivers to cross has tested the material of my 
four friends. 

The Scotchman never came at all, we left him 
in the village when we came to camp. He was in- 
valuable in organizing our needs and dispatching 
the mule train, but there was no cold beer in these 
regions and he went back to Tampico. 

The Mexican started with us, but turned back 
half way. 

The Irishman is a man of affairs, he comes and 
goes — comes whenever he can snatch a spare few 
days. i 

274 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

The Canadian has been able to remain. 

Dick calls it "home" — and I suppose for him 
it is the nearest thing approaching a "home" that 
he has had since we left England, or anyway New 
York. For me also it has somewhat of a home 
feeling. It is so primitive, so simple, so poetic. 
One comes to it with an appreciation that is very 
nearly love. 

How little one needs, if the climate is kind, a 
house with walls is no longer a necessity, nor is 
fuel. All one needs is a roof to shade one from 
sun and rain, and for furniture just books, heaps 
and heaps of books. One wants all the books one 
has longed for time to read, and all the books one 
loves that one dreams of re-reading. 

Our kind hosts, the man and wife Mexican 
peons, are allowing us to share their roof. It is a 
high thatch of palm leaves, it might be an open 
barn or hayrick. And under this roof, we have 
pitched our tent. At one end there is a room wal- 
led off transparently with battens like a birdcage, 
this is lent to us for a storeroom and the Japanese 
cook and his wife sleep in it. 

Behind a screen of wattles, on a plank, sleep the 
owners of the roof. I wonder if they will live all 
their lives in this place to die some day on the plank 
bed behind the wattle screen. They are a charming 
couple, so happy and devoted. He makes money 
by growing some sugar cane on the island, and a 

275 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

few feet away from our thatched barn is another, 
under it a primitive press in which they squeeze 
the juice out of the cane. Under that roof another 
tent is pitched, and there the men sleep. I don't 
know who they all are, but they come and go, and 
some remain — they are all workers in the Tam- 
pico firm. 

Our island camp is like a miniature United 
States, composed of a variety of nationalities, but 
all submerged into a family unionism. 

The Irishman is the real Commandant, but he 
is obliged to be away most of the time. He sends 
in his absence members of his firm, those who 
need a rest or a holiday, and are a protective force. 

These men are of varying types, most of them 
simple hardworking people whose literary tastes 
run no further than detective stories and who do 
not deeply think nor discuss the world's problems! 
They have a certain kind of humor which usually 
consists of" teasing the cook, or telling stories about 
getting drunk. The only cultured one among 
them is the Irishman, who reads Schopenhauer 
and Ibsen. 

He has just arrived for two days. This morn- 
ing we walked down to the foot of the island, 
crossed two rivers, by means of felled trees, and 
walked back along the mainland, expecting to be 
able to recross the river opposite the camp without 
going back the way we came. We had a pleasant 
276 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

and varied walk, half in the water to our knees — 
so that my top boots became like water bottles — 
and then to our waists, all to no purpose, the river 
was unfordable. Eventually being hot and weary 
we plunged in up to our necks. 

It is a lovely climate that enables one to do these 
things, which in England would produce pneu- 
monia. Finally in desperation at not accomplish- 
ing our purpose, we resolutely stepped out, into 
the shallowest of the rapids to effect our crossing. 
I watched the man walking rather insecurely, try- 
ing the riverbed ahead of me; at each footmove 
one's leg with great difficulty withstood the current. 
We seemed to be nearly over the worst, when I 
had a sensation of wavering, I put out my hand, 
he grabbed it, and together we were carried off 
our feet and rushed like tumbling logs down- 
stream. Everything seemed dark and chaotic. I 
was not conscious of my head being under water 
The only thing that impressed me was our utter 
helplessness and the futility of his strong grasp. 
Very clearly I said to myself "This is the end." 
It must come some day, somehow, and this was 
the day and this was the way. I wondered how 
long it would take and if it would hurt. 

Then in the muddle when one seemed to be turn- 
ing over and round, any sort of way, a mere bundle 
of rubbish, I came on top, and saw the river bank 
quite close — I snatched at grass, at roots, all failed, 

277 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

and then something held — "I've got it, I've got 
it," I shouted in triumph, and when we regained 
our feet, and stood waist deep,, spluttering we 
looked at one another, without a word, in great 
surprise, and laughed, but my laughter was very 
nearly tears. 

We triumphed in the end, I would not return 
the way we came, so from the mainland opposite 
our camp, the Irishman got across hand over hand, 
on a wire hawser that spanned the river. It used 
to serve the ferry which now lies wrecked and de- 
relict half a mile down-stream; once across he im- 
provised a boat, out of a big wooden box and came 
across to fetch me. 

We were rather silent at supper; there seemed 
some food for thought. 

It is a beautiful but awesome thing, this river. 
Higher up just around the bend of the mountain 
it cascades for half a mile: thunderous and force- 
ful. It approaches our island, almost like a flood, 
diverting into varying streams, creating islands, 
engulfing trees, there is not a sight of it that does 
not contain a waterfall and a fast current that 
pours over rapids. Everywhere there are water- 
falls, usually six at a time from every direction. 
Dick says all the rivers in the world have joined 
us here. It is an hypnotic, wondrous, fearful 
thing. Sometimes I hate it, always I fear it, se- 
veral times it has tried to snatch Dick from me. 
278 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Always I think it wants to take Dick, and he loves 
it so, is always in it, fearlessly going out of his 
depth, by hanging on the swiftly floating logs. 

The river has the spirit of a passionate irre- 
sponsible creature that knows no laws. 

It thunders and foams, roars and rages, laughs, 
is uncontrollable and wild one minute, the next, 
gentle as a little child, a thing of moods, untame- 
able. There are people with the spirit of the 
river. They are genius's or revolutionaries. 
Some of them are mad. ... I hate, I love, I ad 
mire, I fear the river. 

September, 1921. Tn Camp, 

He left today (the Irishman I mean) ; I walked 
with him to Micos station. The train was due at 
7 a.m. by starting at 9:30 a.m. he only had 3 hours 
to wait. (Such are the Mexican trains). It was 
a hot long climb, I had not been back to the vil- 
lage since I left it. When we got there we found 
that it was Sunday. 

Instead of the little peaceful half asleep village 
I had known, it was thronged with people, the 
stores were doing a roaring trade. The meat- 
sellers had it hanging in streamers from a pole, the 
fruit-sellers had them on a handkerchief in the 
mud. Everyone from the neighboring country 
had come to town. The women looked at me 
pityingly, their men gave them dresses and shoes 

279 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

and shawls but I, poor thing, my man gave me 
only his old clothes and boots to wear. 

The most successful seller was the fellow who 
had a lump of ice and sold colored drinks. I 
drank and drank, my man gave me that unstint- 
ingly! he gave me colored drinks, a penknife, 
twelve handkerchiefs, and a straw hat — it was not 
ungenerous ! 

While thus engaged a cadaverous unshaved 
grey-haired man in a blue shirt, split shoes, and 
one large iron spur, introduced himself. "It isn't 
often one finds Americans here, let me shake your 
hand" He said he was American, had lived 
here many years, on a ranch, and that he was a 
Doctor. Three finger nails were missing from the 
right hand. He wore spectacles but had a distant 
look as if he saw not what he saw. A living Rip 
van Winkle. "Going to Tampico? a three days 
trip" — he said. "Three days? you mean ten 
hours." "Three days" he repeated — "on a good 
horse" — so! — the train was not for him. 

"The train breaks down" he said contempt- 
uously, as though anyone would entrust them- 
selves to a train who had a good horse. He limped 
away without another word. We crossed the 
street to another store and a young man with an 
American accent waylaid us "Pardon me is your 
party complete? a white man's body lies drowned 
a short way up the river" — he said it in a tone of 
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perfect detachment and indifference. The body 
was there and must be identified. We hesitated a 
moment, looked round at our party, there were 
three or four odd members of our camp — we were 
complete. 

Further down the village street a horse was 
lying with its four feet tied together and two men 
operating on its mouth with a big carving knife. 
The horse groaned and sniffed and sighed and 
blood flowed. 

Approaching us on all fours was a child of five 
or six. Like a quadruped it walked, a cursed 
thing, doomed from birth. It looked at us cross- 
eyed, and its face was the face of a little wild ani- 
mal. 

We did not go to to see the corpse, the others 
went laughing and whistling, cracking grim jokes, 
— the law in Mexico is that no body may be re- 
moved from the water until identified. 

They told us on their return, that it had been in 
the water two weeks, it was floating on its stom- 
ach, fishes had eaten the face, vultures were hover- 
ing about the back. "Someone drowned" — and 
that's all that mattered, but on a Sunday morning 
how diverting for the village 1 

September, 1921. In Camp — Mexico. 

Last week we were joined by an Anglo-French- 
Dutch-American born in Chicago — a man with a 

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close cropped head looking like a convict; he was 
reputed an anarchist and a dynamiter. He did 
not fit in with the spirit of our camp. He said of 
me that I was a poor Socialist, too imperious in 
tone. I said of him that he was a poor Anarchist, 
too autocratic. He talked to the servants like dogs, 
and to his equals as subordinates. Within 15 min- 
utes of his arrival, the camp was simmering with 
indignation. 

Pedro, the lad of the village, who offered his 
services and was taken as waiter, and who always 
smiles when asked for anything, opened wide his 
black eyes, and looked wonderingly at this strange 
new personality. 

The Jap cook — who shoots wild parrots with a 
revolver, and whose Mexican girl wife spends her 
time feeding the small wild birds that her husband 
has caged — were both on the verge of a general 
strike. As a result of which the A. F. D. Amer- 
ican said he would "chuck the Jap into the river" 
and looked as if he meant it. 

We have permanently attached to us two half- 
Mexican Texas boys — they wear sloppy clothes, 
red knotted handkerchiefs round their necks, and 
loud blue check shirts. One of them with black 
hair standing up on end and a three days' growth 
on his chin, looks like the most dangerous type of 
Apache. I overheard these two by the light of a 
lanthorne discussing the newly arisen situation. 
282 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

They were not going to accept any orders from 
one their equal. "He may have been in the 
firm 20 years, and he trades on it but that does not 
make us his subordinates" — they argued what 
should be done: not fight him with fists they 
agreed, as he had done some quite shining light 
boxing in his day — "we will get him into the 
river!" — Here I interfered, I assured them they 
were here to take care of me, and there must be 
no tragedies and no rows. I left them when they 
had sworn to keep the peace. 

The worst thing the A. F. D. American had 
against me was that I offered him the eggs after 
General Barragan had tasted them. General Bar- 
ragan is my parrot. So beautiful, so spoiled. He 
has a passion for poached eggs, and always comes 
onto the table at breakfast. Who could mind eat- 
ing out of the dish after General Barragan? But 
whatever I did was wrong, in the unrelenting 
eyes of the A. F. D. American. So I got the Ca- 
nadian, who is senior to him, to send him back as 
soon as possible to Tampico on some pretext of an 
errand. We breathed more freely when he was 
gone. 

The Swede who took his place was sent, I think, 
as a practical joke, for the poor man could be of 
no value to us and he was miserable in a life that 
was perfectly alien to him. A rather thin, chetif 
man; he hated the effort of the long rough walk 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to get here. Hated the tent, the bugs, the heat, 
washing in the river, the absence of movies and 
restaurants. 

"Isn't it beautiful?" I asked him — Oh yes, he 
agreed it was beautiful. ''Peaceful ?" Oh yes, it 
was peaceful. "Restful?" Yes, it was restful, but 
he was not in search of beauty, peace or rest, and 
he left us at his earliest opportunity. 

One night, however, we broke the spell. There 
was neither rest no peace. We gave a dance! 

In a way it was unpremeditated, and grew by it- 
self, as those things sometimes do. It began by 
engaging two musicians, a violinist and a mando- 
line player and by inviting the milkman's daugh- 
ter and two nieces. 

The news spread like wildfire, and we who im- 
agined we were far from human habitations, sud- 
denly found ourselves with about ^o men on our 
hands! They appeared at dusk from every di- 
rection. They hailed the ferry on both sides of 
the mainland, they arrived all smartened up, and 
by the light of our lanterns and our few colored 
paper lights, we saw rows of white bloused In- 
dians in their best hats. Our dance floor had been 
especially arranged for the occasion — all the 
weeds and creeping water melon and small palms 
had been grubbed; the earth levelled and quite a 
big space in between the two barns was rolled and 
ready. Four felled tree trunks were the seats that 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

outlined it — and on these, the Indians sat in rows, 
like birds contemplatively. 

The arrival on the dance ground of the Tour 
specially invited women was full of formal cere- 
mony. They were preceded by the wife of our 
landlord and by the cook's wife — one behind the 
other, in silence they walked. At sight of them 
the row of men on the nearest tree rose and fled 
as one man, and distributed themselves elsewhere 
like magic, leaving the seat to the women, who sat 
on it all in a solemn row. 

When the music tuned up, the bravest men 
walked across the ground, selected their partners 
with a bow and a fine sweep of Mexican som- 
brero, and before dancing they paraded round 
and round the ground two by two. They never 
smiled. The women kept their heads bowed and 
their eyes glued to the ground. When spoken to 
they did not answer, — their whole attitude was 
maddeningly submissive and full of humility. 

When they danced it was a very fast two step, 
and the man held his girl at a very respectful dis- 
tance. She did not appear to lean on him or touch 
him. They also danced a little country dance, mon- 
otonous and dull, of little shifting steps in lines 
opposite one another. I danced once with my land- 
lord, and the rest of the time with the Texas 
"Apache" boy. I am told the evening was a suc- 
cess. It looked to me dull and sad in the extreme. 

28s 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

One hoped up to the last moment that the party 
would cheer up and get merry, but even rum 
served all round did not stimulate them. I am 
told the Indians are like that. Stoically melan- 
choly. Such an evening compares curiously with 
the same as it would be in Italy, Spain or Russia — 
there is hardly a country one can think where the 
native is not stirred by national dances and music. 
The men as well as the women looked rather apa- 
thetic and passive and stupid — out of the lot I 
noticed only one man who had individuality, sta- 
ture and fine features. He had the appearance of 
a stage bandit and assurance of manner that set 
him conspicuously apart from the others. He wore 
high boots and immaculate white linen coat and 
a large revolver in a holster on his belt. I asked 
about him — he kept a store some way down the 
river. 

The great mystery was: where did these people 
all come from? Not from Micos, the village afar 
off — but just from plain thatched huts "not half 
as fine as ours!" among the woods and hillside. 

The supper we provided in haste from our 
tinned store was greatly appreciated. Hands dived 
into the apricot or sardine tin as their choice se- 
lected — and when they left hours later, volleys 
were fired from the mainland, which, as I had 
gone to bed and was fast asleep, woke me up with 
a bewildering start. 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

September^ 1921. In Camp. Mexico. 

The strange Anglo-French-Dutch-American 
anarchist whom we sent, sullen and protesting 
from our camp, must have cursed us, as he went. 
He is the seventh child of a seventh child, and 
what he knows — he knows. 

I think he cursed the Canadian, who sent him 
back. Cursed me for getting him sent. Cursed 
Dick for being mine. The very next day after his 
departure the Canadian had fever, and a tempera- 
ture of 104. Dick had a suppurating bloodshot eye 
and could not see, and I went to bed with some 
mysterious poisoning which may be of an insect 
or of a weed, but cannot be identified. 

That was seven days ago. I am still in bed, suf- 
fering as if I had been scalded. A cradle over me, 
of reeds, protects me from the unbearable touch 
even of the sheet. 

The Canadian for whose life we feared at one 
moment, wanders about, still with a high temper- 
ature, lies restlessly on the river bank, gasping for 
air and praying for ice. 

Dick is able to go out today, but with a 
bandage. It is a dreadful anti-climax, this last 
week of our camping days. For a month every- 
thing has been so perfect. One had not reckoned 
on the snake in Paradise. 

A doctor came 20 kilometers on mule-back. He 

287 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

stayed the night and doctored us all, but without 
any apparent result. 

I feel as though I were on fire, and I am nearly 
mad. At first I could drag myself to the river and 
plunge in and get temporary relief, but for two 
days now the river has been in flood; muddy, 
opaque, and raging; two nights of thunder-storms 
achieved this result. Storms, which relieved for 
me the endless monotony of a sleepless night. 

I have my bed close up to the open tent flap, and 
I could see the land lit up by lightning flashes that 
lasted sometimes a minute at a time. The thunder 
was stupendous; if it could have been linked to 
music it would have been super-Wagnerian; it re- 
thundered from mountain-side to mountain-side, 
followed by a death-like lull. 

One imagined all was over. Then with dra- 
matic suddenness — an earth-shaking crash, as if 
God in a temper had slammed His door. This 
drama took about three hours from the night, and 
the river has risen yet another foot. 

September 9, 1921. In Camp. Mexico. 

The cycle has come round. Again it is my 
birthday, just a year ago I bought my ticket for 
Russia. 

Dick managed somehow to get a bunch of 
gigantic mauve convolvulous flowers that were 
growing up a palmtree. He brought them to me 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

with great sentiment, so my birthday was, after all, 
a birthday I 

Tonight is the third night of thunder storms (I 
am writing by torch light in the midst of it) . 

After nights of pain and sleeplessness one be- 
gins to think stupid things: I feel as if this beauti- 
ful valley were a valley of death ; I have thought 
for sometime that the valley meant to keep me. 
Even the way I came to it was strange and un- 
canny — almost called to it from the train window. 
It cast a spell on me then, a spell strong enough to 
enforce my return. 

Ever since I came it has been suggested to me 
that I stay forever, why go away? 

The suggestion first came from man. Then the 
beauty of the place set itself to lure me. Then the 
river tried to catch me. It has tried to catch Dick 
too. Having slipped through that, I am now 
poisoned unmercifully. I shall get over that but 
then there's still the river, and every storm makes 
the water rise, and the strong current grows 
swifter. In the end I can only leave the island by 
ferry, and the river is getting more and more im- 
passable. After a month of Paradise weather 
suddenly these storms, on purpose to stop me 
going. I must go in four days. I will be well 
enough to go in four days I will go in four days 
whether I am well enough or not . . . but, in the 
end there's the river to cross. 

. 289 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I might have known it was uncanny, this beauty. 
This enticing stillness, this holiness of peace — 
it is a trap. It is a valley of death. It is full of 
spirits and mysteries. I must get out — I am mad. 
No, I am not mad, I am sick. 

September n. In Camp. Mexico. 

The Irishman returned this evening for the 
week-end, his errand being to help us start on our 
way on Tuesday next. His train was late — he ar- 
rived just before daylight faded. I heard them say, 
"He has some one with him, who can it be . . . ?" 
It was the Swede again, poor man having been 
prevailed upon to return. 

Our Mexican "Apache" wenti across to fetch 
them. Suddenly I heard screams and shouts, 
"They're in — they're in!" I leaped out of my 
sick bed, flung on a dressing gown and went out- 
side the tent and saw two men in the water mak- 
ing for the bank. It was the Irishman saving the 
terrified Swede. 

The current had been too strong and the Texas 
boy was frantically trying to hold the swamping 
boat to the wire hawser that spanned the river, to 
save it from being lost. But he could not hold, 
and in another moment he and it were floating 
rapidly amid-stream, heading for the rapids. 

It was not until afterwards that I learned he 
could not swim. No one has yet understood why 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

he was not drowned. He went over the falls and 
was engulfed underneath the capsized boat. The 
river divides here into two currents. By mercy 
of Providence the boat was swept along by the 
current that runs into shore instead of by the 
other, which would have carried him straight on 
down. 

He came ashore having displayed great calm 
and courage. When his safety was realized the 
next problem was how to get the other two across 
the river, the terrified Swede could not swim, the 
Irishman had gone back to the mainland for 
him. They could come across without much dif- 
ficulty and risk, half in, half out of the water hand 
over hand on the wire hawser. The Swede stood 
shivering on the bank, he would not contemplate it. 
The Irishman accomplished it, went back and 
forth three times to fetch him — two men from our 
side went across with ropes to help him. He was 
immovable. Rather would he return all the long 
hard weary way to Micos in the dark and take his 
chance of village hospitality, and catch a train for 
Tampico in the morning. 

I think if I were a man I would rather drown, 
than admit before so many people that I was 
afraid to attempt what the others proved could be 
done with safety. After such a journey, to be so 
near home, to see the goal just across the way — to 
be so tired — so hungry and so wet, and not to make 

291 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the final effort to get there. Well — he went back. 
The evening seemed to me a strange corrobora- 
tion of my last night's musings. The river rises, 
and it rises — and in four days time, I have to cross 
it by the ferry. 

September 12. Mexico. 

My fears were unwarranted: In the end, the 
river was kind and calm and let me pass — I said 
goodbye regretfully, lingeringly, even I have to 
admit tearfully. 

I am quite sure I shall never return to the island 
that has been my world for a month. 

It is a closed chapter, but a very definite chap- 
ter, and I have learnt many things. I have learnt 
that nature, with her camouflage garb of beauty, 
is merciless, cruel, pitiless and hostile. The un- 
polluted virgin forest contains poison and disease. 
Civilization which I have always scorned is fight- 
ing Nature all the time. The wonder is that any- 
one survives Nature. Cruelty is primitive, not 
decadent, as I used to believe. 

Nevertheless, long after I have forgotten the 
hurt of Nature, I will remember a thousand beau- 
tiful things that are indelible. 

I have been happy — on the whole tremendously 
happy. A happiness that is pure and abstract and 
did not depend on a human being. 

But if I lived in this country I should weary of 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the seasonless sameness. There are things that the 
blood of my race would cry aloud for. 
I should miss: — 
— ^The turn of the leaf in Autumn. 

The frosty crispness of an early dawn. 
Twilight. 

My footprints in the dew. 
Pheasants fluttering to roost. 
Green beechbuds in the Spring. 
Mist of bluebells in a leafless wood. 
The robin's song. 
A wood fire crackling. 
And the pleasant sight of children in clean 
white pinafores on their way to school. 

September 15, 1921. Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. 

Such an anti-climax — the Immigration people 
have refused us entrance to the U. S., because 
Dick had fever and sore eyes, which they say is 
"trachoma" described officially as "a dangerous, 
contagious disease." 

It nearly broke my heart to see my San Antonio 
train steam away, and us left in Mexico. We so 
counted on getting to a good hotel and a good 
doctor at San Antonio. Goodness knows when 
we will ^et out of this country. The Doctor says 
it will take time. 

The Mexican Laredo Hotels are indescribable: 

293 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

no water, no food, no drains, floor covered with 
ants. We leave tonight for Monterey to await 
Dick's recuperation. 

We are so dirty, so worn out, so poisoned, so 
sore and wretched, such a Job's company. That 
is what camping in Mexico means. 

From this window, I see across the river the 
U. S. flag floating from dignified buildings. So 
near, so longed for. Heaven's door closed. 

It is a blow. 

I feel lost, very homeless, very unloved, very 
unwanted. 

September 17, 192 1. Monterey, Mexico. 

Of course Dick has not go trachoma — the 
doctor who has lived in Mexico 20 years rec- 
ognized it at once as the most ordinary Mexican 
eye disease prevalent among' children. T shall 
probably get it too. Meanwhile here we are, re- 
cuperating. The Hotel has at least got baths and 
hot and cold water. One is so reduced in spirits, 
so humbled, so unspoiled, one hardly dreams of 
higher bliss than this! 

I had not even the energy to get into the Plaza 
and see the Centenary procession. Dick and I got 
up on to the deserted and neglected roof garden. 

There one views the jagged mountain ranges 
by which the town is surrounded. It is really 
rather beautiful, but my spirit is across the border, 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I am existing here under protest; sullen, bored, 
inactive. I have an affection for the United 
States. I vv^ant to get back there. 

Though they treat me like a steerage emigrant 
it makes no difference, and after all, what am I 
but an emigrant? A first class, specially reserved 
saloon, emigrant — but none the less a simple home- 
less emigrant, asking humbly for admittance. 

The American industrial magnates here have 
been ever so kind and helpful. The American 
Smelting and Refining Works especially have 
done more for me than I can ever repay. Their 
practical and volunteered help and great thought- 
fulness cannot be described nor appreciated in 
mere words. I rather suspect the channel through 
which this help was contrived, although his name 
has not been mentioned to me. 

To while away our waiting moments, Dick and 
I, in company with a representative of the Bald- 
win Locomtive works, went to an amateur bull-fight 
in celebration of the Centenario. A feeble amateur 
affair it was. Nothing illustrative of Mexico bull- 
fighting. A bedraggled show, neither decorative, 
spectacular nor well fought. Mercifully the bull's 
horns were sawn off at the tips so we were spared 
the sight of horses ripped up and trailing entrails. 
But I saw enough of blood and brutality. The 
audience cheered, laughed, sang, shouted. Almost 
it sounded like a baseball game. The more blood 

295 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

flowed, the more they shouted with joy. The bulls 
were young ones, too young to be very fierce. They 
would not face the horses at all, and to enliven 
them, the bandolaria were charged with a time 
fuse and exploded like a firework with loud de- 
tonations, and burnt interiorly. For some time 
after the explosion, smoke emanated from the 
burnt, black, bleeding wound in the bull's back. 
One animal in terror jumped the paling. The kill- 
ing with the sword at the end was bungled every 
time. The sword missed the vital spot and was 
plunged up to the hilt in the brute's shoulder, to 
be withdrawn, on the first opportunity, dripping 
with blood, and restruck again, and again. The 
mob cheering the while. When the last bull was 
killed the crowd flooded the ring, and the dead 
bull was mutilated by people who carried away 
bits of it as souvenirs. When the carcass had been 
finally dragged away on a rope by two mules and 
a pool of blood marked the spot, boys besieged it, 
dipped naked feet in it, seemed hypnotized and 
enthralled by the sight and touch of blood. 

The horrible thing is that after the sixth bull had 
been tormented to death, one's own feelings as re- 
gards the sight of blood were almost blunted. 
Frankly I longed to see a man killed for a change, 
instead of the bull. There was something ridiculous 
about these swaggering men with their long lances, 
astride horses that could' hardly stand up, and 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

that had to be urged towards the bull by men who 
lashed them from behind. Chiefly the bull seemed 
to be pursued more than pursuing. 

September 27, 1921. San Antonio, Texas. 

My appeal to Washington met with a response 
that has been a revelation to me of American 
chivalry. We passed the border yesterday at dawn. 
I faced it with some trepidation, but we received 
the greatest courtesy and consideration. After re- 
examination of Dick (who is much better) they 
retracted the verdict of trachoma. 

Six weeks accumulation of mail has met me 
here. My head is buzzing with taking it all in. 
The reading did not cheer me. From England, 
on all sides gloomy accounts politically and pri- 
vately. They ask me to return to their gloom. Of 
course one has occasional moments of homesick- 
ness when the desire to see one's own world is over- 
whelming. But one is happier away here. There 
is daylight instead of darkness. There is air to 
breath. There's life. Everything and everyone 
is young, vital, active, hopeful. 

We are resting for three or four days. The town 
has been badly delapidated by the recent floods. 
One goes in to a shop to ask for something — and 
ever the same reply: "Our stock was washed away 
by the flood — we cannot supply you." We drove 
out to the Breckenridge Park and beheld with 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

amazement the impudent little stream that caused 
the havoc. 

There is nothing to do in this semi-American, 
semi-Mexican town. But the hotel is pure Ameri- 
can, full of standardized American luxury. It 
seems wonderful. I ring the bell of my bedroom 
and ask the room service to send me a jug — (no a 
pitcher I have to call it, else they don't under- 
stand) — a pitcher of lemonade. I don't always 
want the lemonade but I love to see it when it 
comes. The glass jug is a real object of beauty — 
a work of art. It is full of sliced oranges, carmine 
cherries, ice and green leaved herb. It is a riot of 
color, a delight to the eye. I might be drinking in 
a dream the sap of irridescent precious stones! 

I am making use of those quiet days to try and 
tame Dick. At present he is a savage. He keeps 
on hitching his trousers up as one unaccustomed 
to wearing clothes. He exclaims: "Jesus!" when 
unduly stirred. He learnt it from the Texas boys 
in camp. He is not sure what he may or may not 
eat in his fingers and is very clumsy with his fork. 

To counter-balance this he has acquired a use- 
ful knowledge of things. For instance one of his 
games it to lay pipe lines — oil of course. He 
knows something about locomotives, and what the 
very newest type is like inside as compared with 
the old (the Baldwin locomotive representative 
took a fancy to him). He has a smattering of 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

knowledge about gods and things you find in the 
earth. But he isn't (at present) fit to tea out at 
five o'clock in a drawing room with any of my 
friends' children. 

October 3, 1921. Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles 

I asked how long it would take me to get to Los 
Angeles. They said three days. I had expected 
it to take ten hours. I cannot get used to distances 
in this country. 

So this is Los Angeles! 

For two months, at breakfast, lunch and dinner, 
Mr. Washington B. Vanderlip used to tell me, at 
Moscow, about Los Angeles. He would not listen 
to anything about Russia. The Russians would 
have been interested to hear about America, but he 
did not tell us about America, he always talked 
about Los Angeles. No matter how remotely 
conversation drifted onto other subjects, he always 
brought it back to Los Angeles. Finally, one day 
at breakfast, about the end of the 5th week, I sud- 
denly realized I hated Los Angeles, and when he 
began again I put my hand on his : "stop — " I said, 
"and let me say something about London." He 
could not bear it, and left the room. And now here 
I am, as I never expected to be, actually in Los 
Angeles. 

Mr. Goldwyn, whom I met in New York, has 
telegraphed to his studio president, Mr. Lehr, and 

299 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

asked him to take care of me. Mr. Lehr has placed 
a car at my disposal all day and every day. He 
has introduced me to Gouvcneur Morris and 
Rupert Hughes, but above all he has shown me a 
new world of which I was totally ignorant. 

My initiation into the realm of film production 
has been a revelation to me. Possibly the great 
big world that pays its 25 cents to see a "movie" 
show, understands all about it, knows what it costs 
to produce, appreciates the toil and the thought 
and the plan involved. But I did not know. Truth 
to tell I have seen very few films besides "The 
Birth of a Nation" which taught me all I know of 
American History. I have seen bits of plays being 
photographed out in the open "on location" in film 
language, and I had gathered an idea that to be a 
film actress meant that one had rather a lovely 
time, doing spectacular things in beautiful and in- 
teresting surroundings. I saw their lovely photo- 
graphs in magazines. I knew that some of them 
became millionaires, and that internationally 
known ones were mobbed through admiration if 
they walked abroad. An easy path to fame, I 
thought, if one had the right kind of face. 

I really came to Los Angeles for no other reason 
than to have a glimpse of its amusing play-land, 
and it has been a revelation to me. 

My surprise grew as I followed Mr. Lehr from 
building to building. There were departments of 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

dress-making and store-rooms full of lovely frocks 
and materials, some of the finest cloth of gold and 
brocades of Italian weaving. There w^ere cassones 
containing real sables and other furs, tailors, hair- 
dressers, manicurists, carpenters and barbers were 
all part of the organization, and a canteen that re- 
called to my mind the Communist restaurants of 
Moscow, but where, unlike Moscow, I was able to 
get an ice cream soda at almost any time of the 
day! There were a bewilderment of storehouses, 
a sort of dreamland full of everything and any- 
thing that anyone could want in a hurry. Tin tacks 
and paste, Florentine shrines and Henry II chairs 
(so efficiently home-made as to perplex an antiqu- 
ary!), canary birds in cages, Buddhas, invalid 
crutches and Persian carpets. Stores and stores 
full of what they called "props" which I would 
gladly have looted. As for the "Studios" there 
were three or more and they looked like the 
familiar "orangerie" of some old country estate, 
amid trim lawns, such as I thought only Eng- 
land could boast. 

I was surprised that in the midst of this great 
industry there should have been found time and 
thought to spend on abstract decoration and 
beauty. The garden was full of flowers, and stone 
urns cast long shadows on the grass. Strange fig- 
ures passed me by; a pirate, and then some Russian 
refugees and Russian children turned joyful somer- 

301 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

saults upon the grass. And then — the village! So 
quaint and old world, so exactly like our village 
at home. It enchanted me, I thought it would be 
a lovely place to live. I asked questions and they 
told me it was a sham. I could not believe this 
until I had walked all round it. Such a splendid 
solid sham it was, with such an unflinching front. 

Then I began to wonder what was real and what 
was mere illusion. I seemed to go to Russia and 
then to China. I looked for my Romeo in Venice, 
and then felt sadly transplanted to an East Side 
slum. I looked at the ground to be sure I was 
walking on real grass, and up at the sky to see if 
I was still in the world, and then I pinched myself 
and it was still me. 

But in this bewildering land of make-believe I 
found realities. I lingered and looked at some 
plays being staged in opposite parts of the studios. 
I marvelled at the patience and the effort that 
each small scene demanded. Patience and good 
temper on the part of the director, the camera men, 
the electricians, the carpenters — endless, endless 
patience, amazing good humor. I watched one 
small and — as it seemed to me — insignificant scene 
being repeated three or four times, and each time 
seemed to me exactly like the last, and each time, 
when it was over, the director said to the actress: 
"That's good, dear, that's very good!" But he ex- 
plained to me that whereas the first "shot" was 
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45 feet long, the last one was reduced to 25 feet 
and the important thing was condensation. I 
realized the necessity of co-operation between the 
workers, beginning with the author's effort, and 
the "continuity writers," right through the details 
to the end. What immense individual effort, and 
thought and work each film scene necessitates! 
Here too, as everywhere, are the heartbreaks, the 
dreams and ambitions, the triumphs, the disap- 
pointments, the never ending dramas and tragedies 
of human endeavor. 

It is a new world to me, and I have to admit a 
great admiration and a great respect for it. 

I dined, a small party, at the house of Gouver- 
neur Morris. We had a Chinese dinner, especially 
prepared by his Chinese cook. All through dinner 
the conversation was of Charlie Chaplin, his looks, 
his individuality, incidents in their friendship, and 
what I had missed. Never a word of criticism did 
I hear, everyone talked of him with appreciation 
and affection, almost with pride. He had talked of 
me, they said. He had distributed "Mayfair to 
Moscow" among his friends, and most people 
thought we knew one another intimately. Finally 
I found myself too calling him "Charlie." From 
all accounts he is cultured, thoughtful and attrac- 
tive, and I wonder to myself whether I am never 
to know but the mirror'd reflection. I feel like 
one who does not personally know the great, but 

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know someone who does and writes home about 
it! After dinner we left the men, and went on a 
voyage of exploration round the house, which is 
bungalow in type, and very attractive and then 
in the bathroom we paused to powder our noses. 
In the bathroom we remained, three of us, perched 
on the baths' edge, forgot the men, and drifted into 
conversation which was all absorbing. 

One girl was a film actress with bobbed straight 
glossy henna hair. Her face was much made up, 
her mouth might have been of any other design 
than the painted one. She was decorative and 
futuristic and I liked looking at her. She in- 
trigued me. The other girl was a vivacious and 
restless continuity-writer. Both were very young. 
They talked unreservedly about their love affairs, 
and I listened enraptured, as to a story of de 
Maupassant. In the end we were agreed that mar- 
riage would spoil everything and then the men, 
impatient of our absence, came and banged upon 
the bathroom door. 

October, 1921. Los Angeles. 

Upton Sinclair fetched me for dinner. I was 
surprised when I saw the author of "The Jungle," 
whom I expected to be aggressive and strong-faced. 
Instead I found a gentle creature, rather vague, 
and rather shy and with a rather weak chin. We 
decided that our sort of background was not the 
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Ambassador Hotel, and I asked him to take me 
anywhere else. We motored into the heart of the 
town, and went to a cafeteria. This was new to me. 
Never before had I been to a cafeteria. I had never 
even heard what they were like. I followed him 
and did what he did, and tried to look as if I knew 
what to do ; he first took a metal tray from a column 
of trays, and passed along a row or buffet of 
hot dishes, selecting what he liked, and the serv- 
ing woman behind the buffet placed a ration of his 
selection on his tray. Carrying our own trayfuls we 
retired to a little table. We talked until everyone 
else had left, until men on step ladders re-arranged 
the flowers on their columns, until finally the cafe- 
teria closed and we were expelled. Most of that 
time we talked about "The Jungle." I asked him 
a hundred questions. How did he know about 
the lives of the foreign immigrants? How did he 
get into their souls? Had he imagined it, or did 
he know it? How had he learnt so much about 
the details of work at the packing houses? 

I learnt all I wanted to know. He had imagined 
nothing. The Russian family was a real family. 
The wedding feast was real — he was present. He 
had lived in Packingtown. Every story was a real 
story, a proven story. Everything was true . . . 
and that was fifteen years ago, and conditions, he 
said, were much the same today. They had not 
much improved. He is a most sincere Socialist. 

30s 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Unrelenting, uncompromising, he is at war with 
all the powers that be. Don Quixote tilting at a 
windmill isn't in it. Sinclair tilts at industrial 
kings in armor, at the octopus tendons of the news- 
paper kingdom — at all the mailed fists in the world 
in general and the United States in particular. He 
is in quest of truth and light. He wishes to undress 
the veiled spectres, and show us the naked truth 
beneath, the truth with all its maladies and sores, 
its hideousness, its terrible deformities, so ably 
hidden. This mild-faced man will stop at noth- 
ing. He has great courage and never fears destruc- 
tion. He is unwavering in his determination. He 
goes crashing in where angels fear to tread. 

Driven from the cafeteria into the night, we 
motored fast and aimless, talking as we drove, talk, 
ing, never ceasing, until we could drive no more. 
Our road led down a hill, straight like the road 
of the Nazarene swine, into the sea, and so we 
stopped; a great long white line of breakers con- 
fronted us, we left the car, and stood for a moment 
undecidedly. Then a long seaside bench came 
crawling past me. I thought for a moment that 
I was in madland. I remembered in a flash the 
sham village, the illusions of filmland, still so near 
me. Really one should not be surprised by any- 
thing any more. In the dim light I again looked 
at the walking seat and yet again, and then I 
realized the man who was sitting on it was really 
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driving it. The seat was a motor seat. We jumped 
upon it and were carried miles, as it seemed to me, 
along the sea walk. In the distance were bright 
lights, we stopped when we reached them, and this 
was ''Venice." I have always longed to go to 
Venice, but I never knew it looked like this. Over- 
head a network of colored lights, and from no visi- 
ble location, the music of a gramaphone. Before 
us a square stone stately building, called a "Bath 
house" and in large letters over a door "check 
babies here." "Check" (I have learnt) is an 
American word which described what people do 
with their hats and umbrellas when they go into 
a restaurant. Further on, dazzled by the lights 
and laughter of Venice, we stopped for an ice- 
cream soda, and then took shots at sham rabbits 
and moving ducks with a rifle. Here too I was 
introduced for the first time to chewing gum, 
pleasant to chew, but unfortunately unpleasant to 
taste. 

Saturday, October 8, 1921. 

The Goldwyn Studio Co., having arranged my 
reservations for me, sent a car to take me to the 8 
P.M. train for San Francisco. 

When the hotel porter shouted down the line of 
parked cars: "Goldwyn Studio Car" the crowd of 
dinner arrivals simplv stood still and stared. I had 
my parrot "General Baragan" on my shoulder and 

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I stepped into the car with the self-consciousness 
of a recognized prominent film star! 

On the train I did as directed by my hosts-to-be: 
I sought out the director of the train and told him 
"the Lark" would stop in the morning at Burlin- 
game. I hadn't a notion where or what Burlin- 
game was, except that my friends lived there, and 
the train was to be stopped. The director looked 
at me, in a curious way, as though I were a poor 
lunatic suffering from hallucination. He had 
been, he said, on the train for 25 years and it never 
yet had stopped at Burlingame. However, the 
train did stop there in the morning and deposited 
me and Dick and Louise and the parrot with all our 
luggage in the middle of the track and hurriedly 
sped away. Then Constance Tobin, whom I had 
not seen for 15 years and who had been a school- 
mate of mine at the convent in Paris, appeared 
with her husband to greet me. 

Six Days Later. Burlingame. 

In a very short time it became evident to me 
that Constance had remained true to tradition and 
the environment from which we both had sprung. 
A social environment which is much the same in 
all countries. Meanwhile she realized that I had 
played truant. We had an amusing time renew- 
ing ourselves to each other. We began cautiously, 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

but in the end, admitting totally different tastes 
and opinions, we have linked up a friendship that 
is now confirmed. 

Meanwhile the social strenuousness of Burlin- 
game cannot kill me physically, because I am a 
very strong woman, but it has killed me mentally. 
There is a pain at the back of my forehead and a 
void where thoughts should be. Burlingame has, 
collectively, the psychology of a great big girls' 
school. The stranger arrives and is looked at, is 
accepted or ignored, as the case may be. Burlin- 
game is independent of spirit and likes as it 
pleases. Like children, they seem to be care-free, 
happy and contented. Yes, surely these are happy 
people, they represent exclusively the prosperous, 
— they have no anxieties of life. Contentment is 
their most conspicuous quality — they would not 
be here, else. 

It is a self-indulgent, happy-go-lucky communi- 
ty, not over-critical, the spirit of "live-and-let-live" 
which is rather rare in the East, thrives here. They 
lead an easy life in a kindly climate, they can af- 
ford to be generous. They all know each other 
very well, and they see one another every day. 
Sometimes three times and sometimes four. Their 
houses are close together. There are no big 
properties as in England to rouse one's sense of in- 
equality. They motor to each other's houses and 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to the country club, although they are only a stone's 
throw in distance, and every time they meet they 
are pleased to see each other. 

I wonder they have anything left to say, yet they 
talk all the time. It is true they do not listen much, 
they all talk at the same time. 

On Saturdays and Sundays, and at night, there 
are men. These love their golf, their tennis and 
their bridge, and they dress like Englishmen. 

In their midst is one strange man who does not 
belong. I met him, of course, the moment I ar- 
rived. My name being somehow associated in 
people's minds with Russia, I must surely meet 
this Russian no matter what kind of Russian he 
might be. 

"They" said he is the Russian consul, represent- 
ing the Russian government. No one seemed to 
know that the Russian government is not repre- 
sented in this country and no one cared. 

True to type, I recognized at once that he be- 
longed to the regime that's gone. With all the 
charm and arrogance, the old world manners and 
impenetrable smile, this blase cosmopolitan, ap- 
preciative, yet consciously superior, stood out — a 
stranger in their midst. No party seemed com- 
plete without him. But I too was a stranger and 
watched him and I watched them, and I saw that 
he too watched. Sometimes I thought I knew 
what he was thinking and ofttimes I gave it up. 
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Friday^ October 14, 1921. San Francisco. 

I got into San Francisco early, and took Dick 
to Dr. Abrams where George Sterling was waiting 
for me. George Sterling, as I understand, is the 
Swinburne of California. He has an exquisitely 
refined head, a nose that one sees on a Greek cameo, 
but a voice that labels him of his country. 

Dr. Abrams is a doctor whom a great many 
doctors call a quack, and some superficial people 
laugh over. He is the man of whom Upton Sin- 
clair raved to me, declaring that he had made the 
discovery that was to revolutionize the world. I 
am far too ignorant and unscientific to attempt an 
explanation of this theory. Suffice to say that it is 
entirely based on vibration. Each disease, he 
claims, has its own vibratory reaction, and it is 
only necessary to take a blood test to discover what 
the disease is, and then cure it. 

I sat in his laboratory among a dozen doctors 
and watched and listened for two hours or more. 
I should have listened and watched for two weeks 
and then I might have begun to understand. 

I have no right to an opinion, but I have a right 
to an open mind. Those two hours were among 
the most interesting I have ever spent. 

He took a drop of Dick's blood and tested it. 
'This is the blood of Richard Brinsley Sheridan," 
Dr. Abrams announced to the laboratory! It re- 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

acted to the malaria vibration, this he explained, 
might be due to the amount of quinine Dick was 
taking. The cure he said, had the same vibratory 
rate as the disease. He recommended me to stop 
all further quinine and bring him back in a few 
days. He tested him for every other kind of 
disease but Dick had practically a clean slate. This 
is very rare, for most of us have something con- 
genital, even if we don't know it. 

I came away with one conviction at least, that 
Dr. Abrams is a type of genius, is perfectly sincere, 
and is working himself to death. The people who 
know more than I do can say what they like, but 
those facts remain. He is undoubtedly living 50 
years before his time. As for sceptics, I do not see 
how anyone dare to be sceptical in these days of 
wireless telegraphy and wireless telephone, which 
after all are entirely based on vibratory foundations. 
I saw Dr. Abrams discover a cancer in one per- 
son, tuberculosis with syphilis and malaria in an- 
other and a decayed back tooth in a third. These 
were done from a drop of blood, the patients were 
not even in the room. They came in afterwards. 
Nebulously, in my head, I understand the process, 
but one has to be there to see. 

My own experience with the medical profession 
has made me very open minded. I have received 
the results I looked for from the one doctor in Lon- 
don that the medical profession declared to be a 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

quack, when they, the so-called best doctors in the 
profession, had failed to help me. 

I sometimes think the medical profession is, of 
all professions, the slowest to accept new ideas, 
the most conventional. Their sense of professional 
etiquette seems to count before all else. 

Later in the day we went to the house of a friend 
of George Sterling's, a composer, who sets his 
songs to music. There in a half dark room, full 
of flowers, and baskets filled to the brim with rose 
petals, we drank red wine. Curled up on a sofa I 
listened to the playing and singing of his songs. 
Now and then George would read out loud some 
new poem not yet published. 

That night we went and sipped absinthe in some 
low haunt. It is no use, Mr. Prohibition Agent, 
to come after me and ask me where that was, be- 
cause I don't know, and I'm quite sure George 
doesn't remember. 

Monday, October 17, 1921. 

San Francisco is rather proud of being built 
like Rome, on seven hills, and it certainly is ef- 
fective. One street was so steep that a ladder was 
built onto the side walk to help one up. The 
cable cars go slipping perilously down, or crawl- 
ing terrifyingly up. But the towns in this country 
that I have seen vary little in the way of buildings 
and streets. Their atmosphere varies. — San Fran- 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Cisco for instance, has that foreign cosmopolitan 
feeling that characterises New York. But whereas 
New York gets its atmosphere in ships from Eu- 
rope, San Francisco brings it in from the Orient, 
and with it some of the mystery which New York 
has not. 

The temptation to me to board a ship and go to 
China is heart-breaking, and it seems so easy, so 
obvious. Only I can't, because after five months 
of wandering the funds are low. I must return to 
New York, and work and work through the winter 
before me, to store up for the next adventure! 

Monday, October 17, 1921. Burlingame. 
ONE DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO. 

Today Constance motored me into town, and 
we fetched up at 12:30 at the Dolores Mission. It 
was closed, and a formidable woman who opened 
the priest's house door, refused to let us see a priest. 
Constance, undefeated and indignant, retreated to 
the grocer shop across the way and telephoned to 
a Bishop. It was equivalent to "Open, Sesame!" 
On second application the female watchdog melted 
away, and a priest appeared in her stead. He 
had an Irish name, and an Irish face, and he kindly 
showed us over the mission. This was founded in 
about 1770 by the Franciscan friars, hence the sub- 
sequent name of the town, San Francisco. The 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Church was built long after Spain had ceased to 
erect those glories of architecture that are con- 
spicuous in Mexico. In the i6th Century labor 
was cheap, and the Church was rich. In the i8th 
Century the glory of God was chanted in a build- 
ing of adobe (dried mud-bricks) white-washed. 
This simple building still stands, with its little 
whitewashed columns outside, like the entrance to 
a simple Colonial house. Around the Mission 
sprang up the native grass huts. Then with the 
gold-rush evolved the rough mining town, and 
that was the beginning of San Francisco. Before 
the earthquake the town was only 70 years old. 
But I am not writing a guide book! 

From the church we wandered out into the sun 
bathed cemetery, old world, deserted and neglect- 
ed. The first grave that caught my eye was en- 
graved with the name of Arguello, governor 
of the County. He was the brother or the father 
of the girl Concha whom Bret Harte has im- 
mortalised in his poem called: "Concepcion de 
Arguello." Further on, another grave known as 
that of "Yankee Sullivan" a prize fighter who 
had died at the hands of the Vigilante Society — 
"a native of Bandon Co., Cork, Ireland," so the 
inscription ran. I repeated to myself "Bandon . . . 
Bandon" my own little Irish village town — and 
my childhood up to seventeen welled up in my 
heart and memory. The Irish valley, and the river, 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

woods, and hills . . . my friends the poachers, and 
the village drunks who used to frighten me so on 
the lonely road on Saturday afternoons I 

I remember now — that our gardener, and our 
keeper, and the coachman whom we children 
loved, had left us one by one. I used to wonder 
what it meant "to emigrate" — I vaguely under- 
stood they were leaving for "the States," but what 
sort of state that was I did not know, but I re- 
member how they said goodbye; big, strong men, 
with tears in their eyes, impress a child. I stood 
there before the grave of this inhabitant of Ban- 
don, and felt absurdly sentimental. It is a long 
way from Bandon to San Francisco. We lingered 
over-long, and had to hurry away, arriving at the 
St. Francis Hotel extremely late for lunch. Af- 
terwards Mr. de Young took me to his museum 
which he has presented to the town. It has the 
most perfect setting, in the middle of the Park. We 
did a lightning rush through it for we had less than 
an hour. Sculptures, paintings, prints, enamels, 
ivories, textures, furnitures and minerals, he 
showed me a motley collection arranged with care 
and taste. 

From here we rushed back to the Hotel, being 
arrested on the way for "speeding," and Mr. de 
Young left me in the hands of a detective to see 
the town! 

Wc started off first to the city gaol ; I suppose a 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

great many people have seen the inside of a gaol, 
but I had not. It hit me with the full force of a 
first impression. We arrived there in a jocular 
mood, but that mood w^as dispersed the moment 
WQ stepped out of the elevator onto the prison 
floor. 

There they v^ere, humans behind bars. Pacing 
back and forth in the narrow^ caged-in alley-way. 
Each had his cell, more like a cage it looked, and 
their door opened onto this "run." The warder 
showed us how the cell doors worked. One iron 
lever closed the entire row with one movement. 
The sound was exactly like the closing of doors in 
the lion house at the Zoo. I did not like to look 
too hard, I felt a great embarrassment. When- 
ever, at the Zoo, I have stared at lions I have al- 
ways been conscious of the indignity towards 
them, and to stare into the eyes of caged humans 
is almost more than one dare. In one cell lying 
on the bare wood floor, in a contorted position, 
almost standing on his head, one man lay half 
dazed, and seemingly in great distress. The war- 
der said he was a drug-fiend. "How long have 
you been taking the stuff?" the warder asked him 
— "Twenty-one years . . ." the fellow answered in 
a strange strained voice, moistening dry lips, and 
opening and closing his eyes. Then with a sud- 
den outbreak, and without shifting his position: 
"No prison ever stopped a man from taking dope." 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

In another section, a nice looking Spanish boy 
was sitting writing in his cell. It looked like a 
cabin on board a ship. He had ornamented the 
wall with pictures from the illustrated papers of 
film-stars and English peeresses. He looked so 
young, so cheerful, so frank and honest. "Why 
are you here?" I asked. He smiled, and hesitated, 
and then looked shyly down: "A girl — eighten — 
a minor — " 



"American?" I asked. 
"No— Italian." 



"In Spain or Italy that wouldn't put you in 
prison!" I said, thinking of the mature Latin girls 
of fourteen. 

"It's like a home!" he said humorously. 

We went to the woman's section. In one big 
cage sat three or four, one was greyhaired, her 
age was 74. "Smuggling drink" was her trouble. 
I began to feel that it is only a crime to be found 
out. In the next a woman sat alone. Big, thick, 
middle aged, with a face grown hard from suf- 
fering — she arose and came to the iron bars to talk 
with us. She' had at last — she told the warder — 
slept one hour, and felt a little better. Her indict- 
ment was that she had shot her husband. "I adored 
him — " she said, "my daughter didn't want me to 
marry him, because of the way he drank — we 
married just two years ago. Yes I am American 
born — my husband was a Swede. He was a 

318 



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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

cement-worker. His only fault was drink. — Last 
Saturday he bought some moonshine, mixed it up 
with beer, — firewater it was, it drove him crazy. 
He threatened to shoot me first and then himself. 
1 got the gun ofif the Captain (?) who was in the 
house. I thought it was unloaded, and so I hand- 
ed it to him as a joke, and it went off — " 

"Lucky it went off on him instead of on you — " 
I said. She looked at me wearily through half 
closed eyes: "It might as well have been me — " 
We left the prison. 

In the basement of the building the Coronei 
had his office, and he invited us to see "the 
Morgue." In a big room, a big table with a lamp 
and books gave the illusion of a salon. The four 
corners were partitioned off, and handsomely 
draped with velvet curtains. In these the bodies 
lie, the first few days, awaiting recognition. There 
were but two this day, one was completely covered 
over; the other partially. From beneath a sheet 
two stumps protruded, and a bucket hung to catch 
the blood. An Italian boy fishing from a raft, had 
drowned. His body had been rescued from man 
eating sharks. "We have two more in cold stor- 
age, down( below," said the Coroner. We fol- 
lowed him. The place was built like an aquar- 
ium. On either side were great show cases, lit 
up with electric light. In each a body was beauti- 
fully set, wrapped around in a sheet so that only 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the face could show. They can be preserved here 
for several months. 

One's first impression v^as "how^ life-like" — 
they seemed to be some waxen image, in the 
''Chamber of Horrors" at Madame Tussaud's. 

One, an old man, greyhaired, open mouthed, 
head thrown back and dilating nostrils, had com- 
mitted suicide by gas asphyxiation. The other 
a little blood stained smiling boy, red haired look- 
ing at us with such wide open wondering eyes. He 
had been run over by a train. The announce- 
ment of a red haired boy, had brought about 50 
people, but none so far had claimed him. , From 
fifty families a red-haired boy had disappeared, 
it seemed incredible. But, it is midnight — I can- 
not go on writing and thinking of this place, with 
its dead below, and its dead-alive above. I will 
recall how I got out into God's air, and drank the 
cool fresh evening in deep breaths. And so, across 
the square to Chinatown. Here at a street corner 
my detective guide hailed two strange, illdressed, 
square built stalwart men. These were detectives 
in disguise, who mingle with the Chinese crowd, 
and know the Chinese haunts. They seemed well- 
known in Chinatown, disguise is not much use! 
One of them joined us and we followed him. He 
took us into shops and eating houses, where blank 
faced Chinamen played their games of cards and 
dominos and hardly troubled to look up at us as 
320 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

we passed through. Into back premises we went, 
and down black stairs, through secret doors and 
passages, where by the light of an electric torch 
one saw the hatchet marks where doors and walls 
had been hacked down when the place was raided 
by the police. 

However anyone ever discovered the latchless 
secret doors that seemed so perfectly a part of the 
panelled wall or dared to penetrate into the laby- 
rinths of double walls, trapdoors and secret stair- 
ways. Heaven only knows. 

Our stalwart guide, who looked more like an 
Irish prize fighter than a shrewd detective, seemed 
to glory in the game. Every day and every night 
must seem to him a great adventure. He led us 
down a black unlighted alley, a cul-de-sac between 
some tenements, where murders are not in- 
frequent. Suddenly he turned round, on a silent 
footed follower whom I had not noticed: "What 
are you sneaking around 'here for — get out!" he 
said and flashed his torch in the grimly smiling 
Chinese face. Just for a second I felt the atmos- 
phere rather tense — the Chinaman hesitated, and 
then retreated. 

We pushed open a door ajar. A Chinese pros- 
titute stood smoking her pipe. Soberly dressed, 
in black silk jacket and trousers, her hair so neat 
and shiny, her face almost unpainted, she shyly 
grinned at us. I made a comparison in my mind, 

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between this and the half breed Mexicans at Tam- 
pico. In comparison the Chinese was a noble- 
woman. 

The police have their hands full in Chinatown, 
to prevent gambling, doping and prostitution. 
Though why it should be any concern of the law's 
whether a Chinaman, in Chinatown, is solicited 
by a Chinese prostitute is more than I can under- 
stand. This country moves in a mysterious way, 
its wonder to perform, and one can hope that it 
knows best. 

I motored back to Burlingame and hurriedly 
dressed and arrived extremely late at a dinner 
party. Wine flowed, and restored my jaded spir- 
its. I looked round the table at the brilliant, 
cheerful, noisy company and a new thought came 
to me. I found myself pondering on the high 
moral standard imposed by the United States. 
Continually I ask myself this question: ''Is the 
United States more moral than any other country? 
Are the men and women human, or has legislation 
and public opinion extinguished the devil that 
lives in human frames?" I find no answer. 

Wednesday, October 20, 1921. Monterey. 

There is a man in Burlingame who is quite dif- 
ferent to anyone else. He is a recluse. It is very 
strange to be a recluse in Burlingame. He has 
read more books than anyone I have ever met. Not 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

especially modern books, but he will suddenly tell 
you what Petrarch said to Laura, or recall Dante, 
and sometimes be as modern as Stevenson. He is 
difficult to meet, for he will not go out socially. 

Yesterday morning he fetched me in his car and 
motored me to Monterey. I don't know how far 
away it is, but we started at lo A.M. and reached 
Monterey at sunset. A wonderful road, through 
miles of orchards and then winding through 
mountains and forests to the sea. 

We lunched at Santa Cruz, and when we left 
the city, a placard on the boundary said that Santa 
Cruz bade us farewell, hoped we had had a good 
time, and that we would some day return. 

All along the motor road even in what looked 
like primitive wilds, one was distracted all the 
time by placards on the road which hampered 
one's conversation. Mostly they were directions 
for the motor driver who it was taken for 
granted must be a complete idiot. It left him no 
choice, no doubt whatever as to the right thing to 
do. "Blow your horn" — "Dangerous curve a- 
head" accompanied by a diagram illustrating the 
kind of curve to expect, — further directions as to 
what to do with the throttle, etc., etc., and wher- 
ever there was a flat wood fence there was in- 
scribed a reminder that Christ loved me, and the 
option of deciding whether I would sin, or choose 
the other path. Occasionally we were informed 

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"Picture ahead, Kodak as you go." Apparently 
a man may be blind, the state will see for him. 

As the day advanced we speeded, so as to catch 
the sun before it set into the sea. We fetched up 
eventually at his sister's house which is above the 
rocks on the wild seashore, known as Pebble Beach. 
The house, which has arcades and is Italian in de- 
sign, reminded me of Shelley's house at Lerici, the 
house to which Shelley was sailing back from Sor- 
rento, when the storm overtook him and he was 
drowned. The peace, the loneliness, and the sea 
sounds that prevaded this house on the Pacific 
shore were balm to my socially weary soul. I 
walked in the dusk among the gnarled and tor- 
tuous storm beaten cedars of Lebanon that have 
their roots among the rocks. These are the only 
trees that grow, and the only place where they 
grow. No one can explain how the seeds were 
brought, whether by hand of human, or by a bird, 
or with the wind. But here on this coast, with the 
grip of centuries that no storm can dislodge, and 
with their heads as bright young green as their 
stems are old and warped, the cedars of Lebanon 
reign supreme. 

I was sorry that I had only one night to spend, 
it seemed too beautiful to leave so soon. 

I know that some day, when I fiave seen all I 
want to see of people, when I have travelled more 
and allayed some of my curiosity, when I have 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

worked some more and am more tired, then I will 
go away into a silent and lonely and beautiful 
place and never more be seen, and my children 
will say: "We have a funny old mother, who lives 
way off somewhere, ad whom we go and visit 
now and then." 

Thursday, October 21. Monterey. 

Next morning we motored along the coast, 
visited the old mission of San Juan, which is inter- 
esting. The guide showing us over the church 
announced impressively that it was 170 years old. 
*'Is that all?" I exclaimed, looking round at the 
primitive walls that might have been archaic and 
pre-historic. My companion in reply commented 
on "the arrogance of foreigners" and completely 
shut me up. 

We then went and called at the house of Francis 
McComus, the painter. He and his wife were in, 
Mrs. McComus is the first human being I have 
ever seen who looks like a Gauguin, and attrac- 
tive, which I never thought a Gauguin! 

I had never seen the work of McComus before, 
and I was spellbound. One after another he 
showed us his Arizona landscapes, with their pure 
almost irridescent colors. I am aware that I am 
given to enthusiasm, but here is something to be 
enthusiastic about. Men who produce work at 
this level lend to the country they belong to a re- 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

fleeted glory that should arouse much national 
pride. 

Here is a man that Paris or London would ac- 
claim, and who should not be allowed his life of 
indolent contentment on the wild Pacific Coast. 
How strange a country this is, how full of sur- 
prises and unexpectedness! That one should drop 
into a house by the wayside, and find so great an 
artist! 

Tuesday, October 25, 1921. San Francisco. 

Dick Tobin telephoned me to come in early to 
San Francisco as he had something he thought 
interesting for me to do. I picked him up at the 
Hibernian Bank and he took me down to the ferry, 
gave me a ticket, a bunch of violets and typewrit- 
ten directions, and sent me off to St. Quentin pri- 
son across the bay. 

At the prison, which stands up like a great for- 
tress on a promontory, I introduced myself to War- 
den Johnston. He and Mrs. Johnston gave me 
lunch at their house above the flowered terraces, 
sunbathed, with its wonderful view of the bay. On 
their verandah two grey- flannelled prisoners were 
tying up the Bougamvillia creeper. Inside we 
were waited on at table by a Chinaman who has 
a life sentence. I asked his crime ... he was just 
a "Tongman." After lunch the Warden handed 
me over to Miss Jackson who is in charge of the 
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Women's Section, and for an hour I sat and talked 
in their little sitting room, with a group of women 
prisoners. Their bedrooms were like cubicles in 
a girl's school, small, simply furnished, full of 
personal knickknacks, and not at all suggestive of 
a prison cell. Their clothes were blue and white 
narrow striped linen, made pretty] well as they 
liked. Miss Jackson, I found a most interesting 
character. Full of insight and clairvoyance, full 
of deep human sympathy, understanding and 
kindness. One realized how tremendously these 
caged souls were hers to help or hurt, and how 
much more terrible their fate would be if the 
Wardress were hard and without understanding. 
But Miss Jackson talked to me of some of them 
(before I met them) with real interest and even 
affection. 

I asked her whether a life sentence case was as 
easy to manage as one who had done a lesser 
crime. Her reply was illuminating. She said 
that wheras a life sentence was pronounced on an 
individual who might be clean of character but 
for the one desperate deed, prompted by God 
knows what passionate provocation, the lesser 
criminal on the other hand might be an habitual 
petty malefactor who had merely chanced to be 
caught on the hundreth act! 

Out of over 2,000 prisoners only about 25 or 27 
were women, and of these about 10 came and talked 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

to me in the sitting room, showed me their needle 
work and conversed animatedly about the world 
outside. They seemed in their hearts, almost un- 
beknown to themselves to be tremendous femin- 
ists, and we had quite a heated debate on the sub- 
ject of whether men were intellectually superior 
to women, as a man asserted to me the day before 
at lunch. We all granted the physical superiority, 
but as to the rest . . . well, happily we were all 
women and no man heard us! 

We discussed the impending disarmament con- 
vention, and we agreed that it would most likely 
end, as the Versailles conference ended. We con- 
jured up the picture of all the best brains in the 
world, gathered together for months and months, 
with all their retinue of secretaries, and their sec- 
retaries' secretaries, and we were of unanimous 
opinion that women thus collectively could not 
have talked more, with less results. Indeed the 
result of Versailles is completely nil. Some of us 
dared to believe that women might have done 
better! I like to think of even the women behind 
gaol bars, women of varying ages and nationali- 
ties, women with hardened or breaking hearts, 
putting aside now and then their personal griefs 
to watch, humorously, this conference of men who 
assemble for the second time, all seriously, to 
settle the problems of a perplexing and rebellious 
world. 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

At last I asked what I could do for them outside 
and the request was for books. New books, the 
latest publications, "something well written — and 
modern!" Classics they had in plenty. The Rus- 
sian prisoner wanted "Confessions" by Tolstoi. 
The Italians, however, said they would read noth- 
ing, not even if I secured Italian editions I To the 
charming English girl, with a life sentence, I 
promised Margot Asquith's diary, Strachey's 
Queen Victoria and the Mirrors of Downing 
Street. Then Warden Johnston came and fetched 
men and showed me all he could of the rest of the 
prison. 

I saw the library, the workshops, the chapel and 
the hospital, but he would not take me among the 
male prisoners. The sex problem is not without 
interest. One forgets, that to a man with a life 
sentence it is not very fair to parade women visi- 
tors. I sat up in the balcony with the guard and 
watched the men assemble in the yard for lockup. 
They were of such varied types and mostly so 
young. In front of them, like a giant pattio, sur- 
rounded by the prison buildings was a huge par- 
terre of brilliant dahlias all bathed in the setting 
sunlight. These flowers have gone forth into the 
outside world, and won prizes at the local flower 
shows. Hanging from the verandah roof in front 
of the upper story cells, baskets of growing flowers 
were suspended by wires, a curious contrast. 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

There were a few negroes among the crowd. Some 
Chinese and one or two prisoners conspicuous by 
their wide striped uniforms. These were the men 
who had broken parole. One man I noticed who 
did clerk work in one of 'the prison offces, he 
walked across the pattio at lockup time and he 
held his head high and walked with an almost in- 
solent assurance. His hands were the hands of a 
man of breeding and he smoked a cigarette 
through a long amber holder — I pointed him out 
to the guard — "a forger — " he said, indifferently. 
I asked about the negroes — "I suppose they 
have done desperate things — ?" The guard shook 
his head, ''they're not half such bad chaps, most 
of them, as some of the white men — " 

I stayed till the big bell sounded and the motley 
humans were locked up for the night. Then I 
went back and talked to Warden Johnston. He 
is severe and looks hard, but his theory is to ac- 
complish the regeneration of men's souls through 
kindness and trust, and not the brutalizitation of 
a man into a stone. He hopes that most of these 
men when they come out may have a new chance 
in life and make a success. When I got home late 
for dinner, I told where I had been. Constance 
looked surprised and even perplexed. "Did you 
want to see another prison — ?" "Well, such a pri- 
son, yes," "How did you get from San Raffaele to 
the prison?" "In a taxi — " . . . Exclamations — 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

how did I dare trust myself to an unknown taxi, 
how did I know when I told the driver to go to 
St. Quentin prison three miles off that he was tak- 
ing me there? I didn't quite know what to say. But 
it seemed to me that if I wasn't safe to go in a taxi 
from San Rafaele to St. Quentin this must be a far 
more dangerous country than Russia or Mexico 
and then she asked me this strange question in re- 
ply to my account! 

"Did you want to talk with the women prisoners 
for an hour — ?" I thought of all the hours we had 
spent talking with women in the sheltered veran- 
dahs of Burlingame, and I did not dare to tell her 
that the women of St. Quentin had roused in me 
a desire to go to prison, so as to gain some human 
understanding. 

October 29, 1 92 1. Los Angeles. 

I got back to Los Angeles yesterday morning. 
Instead of starting, as planned, for New York, 
my change of plans being due to a telegram from 
Mr. Lehr of the Goldwyn Company asking me if 
I would dine on Monday night next to meet 
Charlie Chaplin, who is due to arrive that day. 
And so of course I succumbed to another delay in 
my schedule. A month ago I should have been 
back in New York but time, they say, was made 
for slaves — . 

This evening, at sunset, Dick and I drove past 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

the flying field and watched the planes set out 
against the evening sky. Dick begged to be al- 
lowed to go up, but I was frankly afraid. This 
morning I was ashamed of my fear. I know that 
I was wrong. One should always trust people, 
things, Destiny. So Louise and Dick and I crush- 
ed into a small front seat and took a flight out over 
the sea. It was cool and it was steady. The green 
fields and the plough patches looked like little 
mats laid out to dry. The motors on the roads 
like small crawling beetles. We could! see the 
mountains behind the mountains, and way down 
below us, on the earth, our little shadow followed 
us. Dick loved it — he wanted to fly on and on. It 
is a great privilege to be born in an age when one 
can get up and leave the earth the moment one is 
bored with it. 

October 31, 1921. Los Angeles. 

Charlie Chaplin arrived in Los Angeles today 
at noon, on his return from Europe. I met him at 
dinner. We were just a party of four at the Lehrs. 
It has been a wonderful evening — I seem to have 
been talking heart to heart with one who under- 
stands, who is full of deep thought and deep feel- 
ing. He is full of ideals and has a passion for all 
that is beautiful. A real artist. He talked a great 
deal about his trip to England. It had been, I 
gathered, one of the big emotions of his life. He 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

left, as he said, "poor and unknown" to return lo 
years later famous .... 

What made a great impression on him was the 
psychology of the English crowd, which seemed 
to him to contain such a spirit of reat affection. 

Of course Charlie is English — and England was 
welcoming her own. Besides, who has more right 
to public adulation than this man who has brought 
laughter and happiness to millions? But it was 
sad, he said, in England — something had hap- 
pened, or was happening. He was not sure if it 
was a decay that had set in, or whether it was a 
reconstruction. But everyone looked as if they 
had suffered, and it saddened him to be there. A 
good country to belong to, we agreed, but not a 
country "for a creative artist," he advised me to re- 
main where I am. And then, in spite of his emo- 
tional, enthusiastic temperament, with a soundness 
of judgment that surprised me, he said: "Don't 
get lost on the path of propaganda. Live your life 
of an artist . . . the other goes on — always." 

One can see, in the sadness of the eyes — which 
the humor of his smile cannot dispel — that the 
man has suffered — has known things we do not 
dream. Has striven, hoped and aimed. Has 
reached his goal, yet he is not content. He feels 
there is more to do, and see, and know, more to 
attain. He believes in work and in producing 
always the best of one's effort. He is not Bolshe- 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

vik nor Communist, nor Revolutionary, as I had 
heard rumoured. He is an individualist with the 
artist's intolerance of stupidity, insincerity, and 
narrow prejudice. He is sincere and absolutely 
without affectation. He has no illusions as to what 
the bourgeois world thinks of "movie actors — " 
and he has no intention of being patronized by the 
condescending. He has an almost feminine in- 
tuition about people, he knows at once if they are 
sincere or not. Before the evening was over we 
had discussed Lenin, Lloyd George, Carpentier, 
J. M. Barrie, and H. G. Wells. I found that he 
had each person pretty well summed up, and his 
opinions of them were not biased by the world's 
opinion of them, nor clouded by their fame; and 
just what he thought (of those I knew) was right. 
In fact Charlie was a great deal more interesting 
to talk to than most of the people who are expect- 
ed to be. 

When he asked me about my work in this 
country, I explained that the United States had 
made of me a writer instead of a sculptor, and I 
told him my view of the American man who is so 
modest that he thinks it is a vanity to have his bust 
done. 

"He does not mind having his portrait painted" 
I said, "he has grown accustomed to the idea. But 
he exaggerates the importance of a portrait bust. 
In fact he is quite un-simple, in his point of view, 

334 



, MY AMERICAN DIARY 

almost self-conscious — " and Charlie, looking at 
me half shyly, half humorously, as he sat tucked 
away in the sofa corner, under the light of the 
lamp: "I'm vain!" he said — "Thank goodness!" 
I said. And so we fixed it right away — that I will 
linger here until his bust is done. 

On the way back to Hollywood Hotel where he 
dropped me in his car, we had a discussion on mar- 
riage. He has the chivalry, and the instinct to 
protect, I maintained my fanaticism of freedom. 

He is a strange little man with a great big soul. 
He made me think of Francis Thompson's essay 
on Shelley, in which he said that Shelley tired not 
so much of a woman's arms, as of her soul. It 
seemed to me it was more a spiritual than a phy- 
sical companionship that Charlie is subconsci- 
ously searching for, in his heart. 

November 2, 1921. Hollywood. 

I have been with Charlie from midday to mid- 
night. He has just left me. First we went to his 
studio, and Dick came along with us to see "The 
Kid" which I had never seen. He had it put on 
for me in his studio theatre, and now I realize the 
whole world of possibilities in films. Just as a 
"movie" can be stupid, boring, badly done, and ir- 
ritating, as any bad bit of work must be, so too it 
can be very fine and very beautiful. Charlie has 
produced an exquisite story. It might so easily have 

335 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

been "soppy" and full of false sentiments — but it 
is not. It is simple, human and full of pathos. 

Dick reacted to it in the most stirring way. 
When the moment came that the Kid was to be 
taken from Charlie and put in an orphan asylum, 
Dick clung round my neck and cried and sobbed. 
He said "I can't bear it, I can't look till the end." 
He got so hysterical that Charlie was quite alarm- 
ed and had to reassure him by saying that it wasn't 
true. "It's only a play Dick I It will all come right 
in the end!" Charlie too was quite affected by 
Dick's emotion. 

Whenever we came to the pathos parts, Charlie 
tiptoed to the harmonium and played an accom- 
paniment and when the lights went on Dick and I 
were shamefacedly mopping our eyes I 

When we went up to his house and lunched, it 
was half past three I The house which is not his, 
but is rented, is Moorish and fantastic in design, 
the tortuous unsimplicity of which disturbs 
Charlie. But he loves the quiet of it and the isola- 
tion on a hill top with the panorama of the town 
extending for miles below to the sea. At night, 
as he says, it is just a fairy twinkling world when 
the town lights up. Later we went for a walk 
round the hilltop, and the air was hot and full of 
evening insect sounds. Dick scrambled wildly up 
the sloping banks, while Charlie and I more se- 
dately walked round and round by the winding 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

climbing path. He was trying to tell me what he 
thought was the ultimate aim of all our effort. He 
maintained that no artist would do great work un- 
til all petty ambition was obliterated. 

"There must be no dreams of posterity, of im- 
mortality, no desire for admiration, for after all 
what are these worth ... at best i,ooo years hence 
people might walk roundi your immortal stone 
and say — it certainly is beautiful; yes, it is won- 
derful — (and Charlie acted the part) — ^Who did 
you say did it? Clare Sheridan 950 years ago" — 
"and then," said Charlie, "in 5 minutes they will 
be saying 'Where is that motor, I told him to be 
back in 35 minutes' " — There is nothing, he said, 
so beautiful that will make people forget their 
eggs and bacon for breakfast — as for admiration 
of the world — it's not worth anything — there is in 
the end but oneself to please : — "You make some- 
thing because it means something to you. You 
work, because you have a superabundance of vital 
energy, you find that not only you can make chil- 
dren but you can express yourself in other ways — 
in the end it is you — all you — your work, your 
thought, your conception of the beautiful, yours 
the happiness — yours the satisfaction; be brave 
enough to face the veil, and lift it, and see and 
know the void it hides, and stand before that void 
and know that within yourself is your world — " 

I said rather feebly that I wanted my children 

337 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

someday to be proud of me — he made a repudiat- 
ing gesture. "You should want them to love you — 
to love you in a perfectly primitive animal way. 
To love you because you are you — to love you 
whatever you are — to love you if you are wrong." 

I said that if he left me nothing to work for, no 
aim, no end, only my own satisfaction, I thought 
one might feel suicidal. 

He was horrified at this. We stopped in our 
walk. Charlie looked at me: ''How could anyone 
like you with so much vitality talk of suicide? Oh 
the glory of life, the glory of the world (he threw 
his arms wide to the horizon) it's all so beautiful, 
and it's all mine . . ." and then we had to laugh at 
ourselves for becoming so desperately serious. 

I had not meant to stay so long but he asked 
Dick if he would like to stay for tea, and Dick 
said yes, and that he'd like to stay the night as well. 
Dick likes Charlie. He says to him: "Charlie, 
you're the funniest man there is . . ." and in the car 
going home after tea, Dick said that as I had 
talked to Charlie all the afternoon it was only fair 
that he should have him all to himself until we 
arrived home. Finally Charlie and I went and 
dined together, and danced at the Ambassador 
Hotel. Everyone knew him, and seemed glad to 
see him back. The whole world is Charlie's 
friend, no wonder Charlie loves the world! 

Then, such a strange thing happened, there in 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

that gay room full of jazz music we got to talking 
of our childhoods. Goodness knows how it came 
about, but I told him mine, and then he told me 
his. He told it with his wonderful simplicity, 
told it with detachment as if he were telling of 
some one else, not of him. It was a terrible bit of 
realism, and I though I rather love realism, I felt 
almost a desire to stop him from going on. It was 
more than one could bear to visualise. 

It was a curious place in which to tell such 
things, but we were oblivious of everyone in the 
room. And now, stranger to me than ever is the 
psychology of this man, once a little child of sor- 
rows, who has taught a whole world to laugh. 

Thursday, November 3, 1921. Los Angeles. 

I have worked the whole day on Charlie's head, 
worked at his house. Today is Thursday and it 
has to be finished on Saturday because he wants 
to go to Catalina and fish. 

It was a very peaceful day, and though the 
lovely Claire Windsor was there when I arrived, 
no one disturbed us during the remainder of the 
day. His moods varied with the hours. He 
started the morning in a brown silk dressing 
gown, and was serious. After having sat pretty 
quiet for some time, he jumped off the revolving 
stand and walked round the room playing the 
violin. Having thus dispelled his sober mood he 

339 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

went upstairs, changed his dressing-gown and re- 
appeared in an orange and primrose one, and we 
went on with the work. He is perfectly right, 
one's desire for color depends entirely on one's 
mood. 

Now and then we stopped for a cup of tea, for 
a tune on the piano, for a breath of air, on the sun- 
bathed balcony and Charlie with his wild hair 
standing on end, and his orange gown dazzling 
against the white wall of his moorish house, would 
either philosophise or impersonate. He told me 
that when he was a young man in London, he 
longed to know people, but that now he knew so 
many and he felt lonelier than ever, and it is no 
use, he said, for artists to hope to be anything else. 
He then put on a gramaphone record and con- 
ducted an imaginary band. It was a very enter- 
taining day, and the work got on awfully well. 

Saturday, November 5, 1921. Hollywood, 

Three whole days I have worked on that bust, 
with a concentration of effort that is exhausting. 
It is finished — I feel tonight the elation of a girl 
out of school. Moreover I can sleep without the 
anxiety due to an unfinished work. Charlie is 
pleased, and I — ^well I am never satisfied, but I 
am conscious of having accomplished my best. His 
friends who know his restless and capricious 
nature are surprised that he gave me those three 

340 




"CHARLIK" IN HIS DRESSING-GOWN ON HIS MOORISH 
SUNBATHED VERANDA 

(Photograph by Clare Sheridan) 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

whole days. I was fortunate of course in meeting 
him immediately in his return, before he was re- 
engulfed in work. Moreover, with some percep- 
tion, I planted myself with my materials in his 
house, and as I wanted him bare throated I beg- 
ged him not to dress. A man in pajamas and dres- 
sing-gown does not suddenly get a notion to order 
his motor and go off to some place. I had him 
fairly anchored. Nevertheless he has been dif- 
ficult to do. There is so much subtlety in the 
face, and sensitiveness, and all his varying per- 
sonalities arrayed themselves before me, and had 
to be embodied into one interpretation. 

Charlie would get down from the model stand 
and observe the progress through half closed eyes. 
Once he said: "I wish this was not me, so that I 
could admire it as I please. I find him very in- 
teresting, this fellow you have made!" and then, 
after a close examination from all angles he 
added : 

"It might be the head of a criminal, mightn't 
it — ?" and proceeded to elaborate a sudden born 
theory that criminals and artists were psycholo- 
gically akin. On reflection we all have a flame. 
A burning flame of impulse, a vision, a side 
tracked mind, a deep sense of unlawfulness. 

Later, as I was finishing, the Comte de Limur 
arrived. He is a young Frenchman who is study- 
ing the moving picture work, for France. He 

341 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

looked at the bust, and then at Charlie, and then 
slyly at me: "I see, it is Pan . . ." and added with 
a chuckle: "one can never deceive a woman!" 

As I needed to work until quite late, it was for- 
tunate that Charlie had changed his mind about 
Catalina. He heard yesterday that the fishing 
season closed there on November ist. 

On receipt of this news he flashed a new idea: 
summoning by shouts "To-om!" his secretary, he 
asked: "Can you get some tents? Can you get 
some tinned foods? Can you find a location suit- 
able for camping — can we start on Sunday morn- 
ing?" 

The reply was in the affirmative, unhesitatingly. 
"Shall we take a chef, or do our own cooking?" 
Charlie looked at me, I informed him that I 
couldn't boil an e.gg. "You ought to be ashamed 
of yourself. We'll take a chef — " he said. And 
so my return to New York planned for Wednes- 
day is again delayed. 

Sunday, November 6, 1921. 

We had planned to start in the morning at half 
past ten, but it was nearer half past twelve when 
we found ourselves en route, and Charlie had 
changed his mind. He said : "They found two 
locations for camp, one in the mountains, and one 
in the woods, but I have decided I want to go to 
the sea shore — we will go and look for a place . . ." 

342 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

"Then is no camp ready for us?" I asked in dis- 
may. (Knowing something of the business of 
camping.) "Our tents are following us in a van," 
he said and they surely followed. — ^What a "fol- 
low the leader game" for anything as cumbersome 
as a van ! And a Ford followed us as well, contain- 
ing the chef! 

We stopped by the wayside for an ice-cream 
cone, and we lunched in a little town, where the 
proprietor addressed Charlie as "brother" — 
Charlie said it was quite habitual among the real 
Americans of that class. I said I thought it was 
very attractive as that one hardly needed a revolu- 
tion to bring about comradship, in a country 
where the waiter calls you "brother." Charlie was 
rather scornful about the sentimentalism of my 
revolutionary ideals. 

When we left the cafe, children had assembled 
in the streets and shouted "Goodbye Charlie" as 
we drove away. It was only his fondness for chil- 
dren that made him wave to them. Otherwise (I 
have observed) he has no desire to be recognized 
or lionized. 

Who has ever seen an American country road on 
a Sunday, and not deplored the prosperity of the 
nation, especially within radius of Los Angeles? 
The road is like a smooth winding ribbon on which 
they race, they pursue, they overtake, the atmos- 
phere is gas and dust, the surface is thick and oily. 

343 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

Any road that is a road at all is humming with the 
throb of machines. The only road that has no 
traffic in America is what is called a "dirt-road." 
It isn't "dirt" at all as we understand the word 
dirt in England. It is just Mother Earth, but 
these roads lead to nowhere, they end in a field on 
a farmhouse, as we discovered, and lost much time 
exploring and re-tracing. The macadam roads 
led down to the sea shore in places where crowds 
had gathered together to camp or picnic. That 
is peculiar about Americans, they love being to- 
gether, I questioned Charlie: "Surely there must 
be lovely peaceful places unmarred by civiliza- 
tion?" and he said: "No — if there is a lovely 
place that is accessible, everyone will have found 
it . . . ." 

"Then," I said, "we must content ourselves with 
a horrid place that nobody wants 1" 

The sun sank lower and Charlie's spirit with it. 
He mopped his brow and shouted: "On — on — 
hurry 1" to the chauffeur. It was a race with day- 
light. Would anyone have believed it was so dif- 
ficult to get away from the world! 

"You should do like the Mexican motors," Dick 
said, "and go across country — " 

In the distance we saw a clump of trees that 
stood out from afar in a flat colorless country, 
and they were by the sea. Once again we plunged 
off the macadam road and pursued a sandy track 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

for more miles. Little by little the world and the 
sounds of the world were left behind and we were 
alone. The road ended as usual, and we found a 
farm house and a notice: 

"Private property. — No trespassing — no camp- 
ing — no hunting — " and then the sun set. 

Our feelings just for a moment were indescrib- 
able. 

The place was perfect. It was everything we 
had dreamed, and more. The wood was of euca- 
lyptus trees, and the smell of them mingled with 
the smell of the sea, and the evening air was still 
and fragrant. We sent a messenger to the land 
proprietor, asking permission to remain, and im- 
pending the answer we walked over the sand 
dunes to the sea shore. The sun had left a crim- 
son and indigo reflection in the sky which colored 
the foam waves as they broke one upon another. 
Charlie was in ecstacies, he was breathlessly in- 
articulate in his appreciation, and we both fol- 
lowed his example, doubled ourselves up, and 
looked at the horizon upside down because as he 
said, one got a far stronger impression of it. When 
we got back to the wood we found that all was 
well. Charlie of course is Charlie and permission 
was granted to remain. In the dark five tents were 
pitched on the outskirts of the wood. 

Late into the night I sat with him over the camp- 
fire. A half-moon rose and little veils of sea swept 

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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

like gossamer over the dunes, and the naked shiny 
eucalyptus stems cast black shadows. Mingling 
with the night bird cries, the rhythmical sound of 
the sea on the shore. 

One by one the lanterns in the camp flickered 
and went out. Charlie sat huddled up before the 
flame, an elfin, elemental creature with gleaming 
eyes and towsled hair. His little nervous hands 
raking the embers with a stick. His voice was 
very deep, the voice of a much bigger man. He 
ruminated moodily. He said it was "too much — • 
too great — too beautiful — there are no words — " 

Wednesday, November 9, 1921. 
By the Sea — California. 

We seem to have been divinely led to this most 
beautiful and secluded place. One can hardly be- 
lieve it was mere chance. So near civilization we 
are, and yet no one passes this way. As far as the 
eye can see the curving beach belongs to the sea- 
birds. There is a fresh water lake full of pre- 
served wild duck, and word has been sent by the 
proprietor that we may shoot, hunt, cut wood, and 
do whatever we like! We surely picked a good 
spot, and then the sand dunes! We discovered 
such a high one yesterday, and Dick took a header 
down it, as if he were diving. So we got no fur- 
ther on our walk, but lingered there and spent the 
entire afternoon scrambling up and sliding down 
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MY AMERICAN DIARY 

head first. Charlie brought it to a fine art, he 
came down slowly with a rhythmical movement as 
if swimming; even sand sliding he does beauti- 
fully. Once we rolled down, and fetched up dazed 
and giddy at the bottom. 

When the sunset sky became streaked pink and 
purple, Charlie kicked off his shoes, and danced 
with his beautiful small feet naked on the sand. 
He did imitations of Nijinsky and Pavlowa — he 
does it so well and with so much grace that one 
doesn't know whether to laugh or silently appre- 
ciate. 

The more I see of Charlie, and the more I know 
him, the more I appreciate him. He never does, 
says, or thinks an ugly thing. I have never met 
anyone like him. I find myself dominated by his 
intensity, and metaphorically sitting at his feet, ac- 
cepting his judgment. He is so immensely bigger 
than the work he is engaged on. I believe that if 
he survives, he may in a few years take a very big 
place in international public life. We have dis- 
cussed half jokingly the project of his standing for 
Parliament. I assured him no one would dare to 
contest him and that he would have a "walk-over." 
I have heard him make impassioned speeches to 
imaginary crowds. He has harangued the sand 
dunes. Not only did he talk well but he talked 
sense, and his magnetism and vision recalled to my 
memory that leader of men : Trotzky. The only 

347 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

pity is that he is too emotional, he is almost con- 
sumed by the flame within him. This is, I sup- 
pose, inevitable in so great an artist. His intensity 
is terrific. Whatever he does he does it intensely. 
He is intensely funny, but he is intensely tragic 
too, he shoots with such intensity that when he lost 
a duck it nearly broke his heart. He puts the same 
spirit into the tunneling of sand bridges for Dick, 
or the story he invents about the wrecked ship on 
the beach. He is as intensely materialist as he is 
idealist. As intensely sincere and honest, and now 
because he wants to be sound on some new phil- 
osophical doctrine, he is studying mathematics 
with equal intensity. I can imagine that at night 
he must sleep with clenched fists and eyelids tight 
shut, and all the intensity of unconsciousness. 

In moments of intense depression he exclaims: 
"I must get back to work — but I don't feel like it. 
I don't feel funny. Think — think of it: if I never 
could be funny again!" 

It is his visit to England that has shattered him 
emotionally. 

Friday, November i i , 1 92 1 . Los Angeles. 

Yesterday evening when we started out on a 
walk, at dusk, a party appeared and waylaid us on 
our path, they had with them some children, to 
whom they wished, — they said — to show Charlie 
Chaplin. 

348 




"CHARLll':" TKLLS DICK Tlih STURV UF Till-. \\Ri-:CKi:D 
SHIP ON THE BEACH 

(Photograph by Clare Sheridan) 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

It was a painful moment, he was shy and un- 
prepared, the children gaped, conversation was 
halting. 

This morning five motors full of children ar- 
rived, being the entire family, nephews and nieces 
of the landowner. The camp was disarrayed, we 
had planned our departure. Later two reporters 
appeared and undaunted by the fact that Charlie 
was not in camp they set out over the dunes in 
search of him. 

I watched them walking back together, Charlie, 
head bowed the picture of dejection. His last 
morning had been spoiled, the beauty and peace, 
so hard to attain, seemed to have been a little 
tarnished. We left hurriedly, leaving the reporters 
in possession of the cherished spot that we had not 
time to look at lingeringly. 

"It was time we left — " he said, and I visualised 
to myself, Charlie hunted, flying from pursuers, 
lost to view for perhaps 4 days, maybe 5, then dis- 
covered, and fleeing again "ad infinitem." For him 
no peace. When at the end of a 70 mile drive we 
reached his house he ordered tea. We sat in chairs 
by an electric lamp, and tried to talk. We found 
ourselves making conversation to one another with 
difficulty. He looked at me as strangely as I 
looked at him, and then he said: 

"You know what's the matter — ^We don't know 
each other." 

349 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

And it was true. I was talking not with the ele- 
mental wild-haired Charlie of the campfire, nor 
yet with Charlie Chaplin of the films, but with a 
neatly dressed, smooth-haired sophisticated young 
man I didn't even know by sight. Civilization and 
its trappings have changed us both. The past 
seemed tinged with unreality. 

The next day (Nov. 12, 1921) we said goodbye 
to the sunshine, the orange trees, the avenues of 
date palms and took the "sunset route" for New 
York. Charlie came to see us off, and was al- 
lowed past the barrier onto the departure plat- 
form, a privilege which made him conspicuous. 
Later, the conductor took Dick aside and asked 
him if he was Jackie Coogan's brother! Four 
whole days and nights we travelled over this end- 
less and tremendous country. Dick said he wished 
the train were a Mexican train, and I knew what 
he meant. In Mexico the monotony would have 
been relieved by an occasional good breakdown, 
which would have enabled us to bathe in wayside 
ponds and rivers, or explore woods. But the "Sun- 
set Express" went on and on, day after day, hardly 
ever stopping. Little by little the dust of the 
desert and the sunshine of California gave way to 
greyness and cold, until suddenly one morning we 
found ourselves in Chicago. 

There was no temptation to linger in Chicago. 
350 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

We went to a store and bought some warm clothes, 
and caught the very next train out. 

We got back to New York just in time for 
Louise and Dick to sail for England on the Baltic. 
I had made up my mind some time before that I 
must have Margaret. The ache caused by our 
separation grew worse, not better. So I risked the 
possibility of Dick being kidnapped by the family 
in England and sent him to fetch her. 

During the ten days he was there I received 
about three cables a day from various relations, 
containing every variety of excuse for the chil- 
dren remaining over there. I was denying them 
"their British birthright" was the grandiose state- 
ment. I felt none too happy and secure until a 
few days before Xmas a wireless from the Celtic 
announced their triumphant return. It was a 
triumph indeed, after six years work, the realisa- 
tion of this dream, that we should have a home 
together. As the ship came gliding alongside the 
quay I saw the pink radiant face, the luminously 
bright eyes of the little daughter I had not seen 
for a year. L. and she shouted to me across the 
narrow water space: " Mummie! Am I ever to 
leave you again?" I was struck by the strangeness 
of her English accent. "It will soon go!" she said 
when I commented on it (and it surely is fading 
fast!). Dick meanwhile, according to the letters 

351 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

that accompanied him, scandalised the already 
overstrained English relations by saying that "God 
save the King" was quite "dreadfully awful," and 
preferring America to England when asked his 
opinion. They do not understand that we do not 
love England less, nor America more; we regard 
the world as ours and our right is to take the best 
wherever we find it. Why should one be confined 
to one country? Italy is my garden, Russia is my 
church, England is my sleeping-chamber, the 
United States my work-shop. In my mother's 
country there is an atmosphere of hope, a vitality 
and a work incentive that does not exist any more 
in the old world. This is called "the land of 
promise" and people come as to no other country 
— in thousand and thousands, of all races, creeds 
and classes. There is no disloyalty implied to 
the land of one's birth in seeking fortune be- 
yond its shores. The blood in the veins of some 
of us may belong to varying countries and con- 
flicting races, and as the only hope for the 
future peace of the world is in internationalism 
this spirit should be encouraged — not deplored. 

January 9, 1922. 

I had settled down in my studio, with the desire 
that overcomes one after awhile to atone for in- 
fidelity. I had firmly resolved never more to 
write nor speak, and to cleave only to the one art 
352 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

that is in my heart. My mind was full of new 
creative work, dancing figures, fantasies and por- 
traits, when suddenly I was asked to go to Boston 
and address a meeting for Russian relief. 

I accepted the offer, not because I presumed 
that any effort of mine could help much towards 
the starving Russian babies, but I wanted to see 
Boston. 

I had heard of Boston almost more than of any 
town in the United States. Henry James whom 
I'd loved from childhood, had come from there, 
and my mother-in-law who used to say to me: 
"I am not American, I am Bostonian." Henry 
Adams I had known, and Cabot Lodge, the friend 
of my father, they too came from there. I had 
heard of the child who recited the Lord's prayer 
saying : ". . .Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, 
as it is in Boston," and so I started off with curios- 
ity, and expectations. 

I got there on Friday night just in time to speak 
at Ford Hall, which was fitted with a motley 
crowd (and some Motleys among the crowd, who 
had come out of curiosity to see their unknown in- 
law, and who would never otherwise have dreamt 
of going to such a meeting 1) 

The audience were responsive and sympathetic, 
but I knew they had to be cajoled, entertained, 
amused. I made them laugh. So they stayed and 
listened. I made an appeal, and brought in a few 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

hundred dollars. But I despise the methods that 
have to be used to induce sympathy for starving 
babies. People have to be bribed to give, bribed 
by the possibility of amusement — endless vitality 
is exhausted in organising balls, theatre perform- 
ances, concerts, or entertaining lectures that wW\ 
draw the otherwise apathetic. I have seen in a 
little fifth story room on the East Side, the volun- 
tary efforts of skilled workers, who are giving up 
their Saturday afternoons and holidays and giving 
their labor free and making garments for the chil- 
dren of Russia from the lengths of woolen ma- 
terial donated by various mills. There I saw some 
of the garment workers who have been so long 
out on strike, not only contributing their work, 
but a dollar a month besides towards the rent of 
their premises. These were the "Tailors' Technical 
Aid Society" for Russian children. These were 
the people whose services brought a lump to my 
throat as I watched the zeal and earnestness with 
which they worked. Theirs was the real blessed- 
ness of giving. 

To the people of leisure and means I hate to ap- 
peal, telling them my personal narrative lightly 
for their entertainment. Even as I did it, I vowed 
it should be the last time. On Saturday I was in- 
vited to lunch and speak at the Harvard Liberal 
Club. I went, thinking it would be pleasant and 
354 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

liking immature youth, and having thoughts full 
of the remote future possibilities of Dick's edu- 
cation. 

As it turned out they were not liberal at all but 
rather prejudiced, and I was assailed with eco- 
nomic questions and problems. Very erudite in- 
deed were these young men. But they seemed to 
believe in human nature working only for gain, 
ignoring completely the existence of enthusiasms 
and beliefs, and sacrifices for ideals, which made 
those skilled workers, just referred to, work for 
no gain at all, as they never would have worked 
for an employer. I put up the best fight I could, 
but in the end, feeling exhausted and battered, I 
thanked God that I had no education but at least 
an open heart. 

After lunch Harry Dana rescued me and took 
me to his aunt's house where he lives, and which 
is called "Longfellow House." It is of historic in- 
terest as having been the residence of Washing- 
ton and also of Longfellow whose grandson Harry 
Dana is. The house was quaintly and attractive- 
ly Georgian and full of dead memories, marble 
busts and musty laurel wreaths. We retired to 
his book lined sanctum and with us was an Indian, 
a follower of Gandhi, who was lecturing at 
Harvard. We lit a fire and sat before it on the 
floor while the follower of Gandhi talked to us 
of Eastern philosophy and oriental serenity. He 

355 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

was not calm in spite of all he said about it, but his 
restlessness was not the impatient unrest of the 
West, it had the dignity of the tiger. As he paced 
back and forth, talking the while, his talk was full 
of poetry and imagery. I realised what had been 
lacking in the composition of one's days: Here 
there is no poetry (with apologies to Johnny 
Weaver!). There is not time, they say, and 
dreams are not for practical people. But the 
follower of Gandhi combined all the practic- 
ability and all the activity, restlessness and 
humor of the West with the i force of Eastern 
imagery. They are great artists, the descendants of 
a great culture. They, not we, know how to live, 
and how to love life. 

Incidentally I gathered that a hot place to be in, 
next December, is India I This Indian revolution 
interests me very much. I believe that before long 
all eyes will be turned on India. 

If Gandhi's methods of passive resistance are 
successful, and India is liberated by a compara- 
tively bloodless revolution, it may mark the epoch 
of a new era and a new religion. 

To-day, the majority of people one meets are 
expressing the desire that Jews and Bolsheviks, and 
Germans, too, should be wiped out. The Christian 
peoples whose religion is based on forgiveness, love 
and tolerance, have been killing each other merci- 
lessly. It is just possible that Christianity is over. 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

that it "went out" in blood and war. Maybe the 
renaissance of the world will come in the Orient. 

Spirit is unquenchable and inextinguishable. 
When crushed in one part of the world it will re- 
appear elsewhere. I make no pretense of prophecy. 
I only say: Watch India! 

I spent the week-end in the family circle and 
was overwhelmed with kindness and hospitality. 
I, who have grown socialistic and Bohemian, 
suddenly went back to being a perfect lady, and 
as a novelty enjoyed it. What beautiful manners 
they had, the Bostonians I met, just naturally 
beautiful old world manners. They seemed like 
those well bred people one knows in Europe who 
are so absolutely "places," so deep rootedly aristo- 
cratic, that they can afford to be tolerant without 
fear of losing caste. 

I have wondered a good deal about America 
and Americans during the year I have spent here. 
They have amused, surprised and bewildered me, 
but it was not until I came to Boston that I 
felt I was at home. Even the town is English. 
There was Beacon Street with its long row of 
individual small houses just as in London, and 
every one had a street door. I never went into an 
apartment. Peoples' rooms seemed to be full of 
books instead of American beauty roses. It was 
in one of these houses, after luncheon one day, 

357 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

that the women left alone together discussed the 
immortality of the soul without any semblance of 
effort or affectation. 

On Sunday afternoon my host took me to the 
Public Library as I wanted to see the Sargent mural 
paintings. Crowds were pouring in. The read- 
ing rooms were packed full of silent studious fig- 
ures. People came, apparently not to look at the 
Sargent's and few of them lingered over the Puvis 
de Chevannes that lined the staircase walls. They 
came, as people long accustomed to their own, and 
went straight for the reading rooms. This inter- 
ested me more even than the paintings I went to 
see. I felt that all my expectations of Boston were 
being fulfilled, as if it had been staged for me. Bos- 
ton could not have been more magnificently Bos- 
tonian. Here resplendent in the winter sunlight 
stood the imposing Library Building, and people 
kept pouring 'inta it from; every direction. Jt 
seemed emblematical of all that Boston stands for. 
I am glad I have been to Boston, it seems to com- 
plete one's great perplexity concerning the United 
States. Here is a country that is composed of such 
widely different towns as Washington, Philadel- 
phia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, all as different 
from one another as they are different from New 
York, and as different as New York is from Bos- 
ton. 

3S8 



MY AMERICAN DIARY 

I wonder there is any co-ordination of movement 
or feeling at all in such a country. I wonder 
there is any political unity, any fraternity, and yet 
there is more than all that; there exists a national 
patriotic spirit. 

Well — I have finished wondering, it brings one 
nowhere, it solves nothing. I will return where I 
belong, to the world of line and form, a world of 
one's own imaginings where there are fewer per- 
plexities and more harmonies. 

THE END 



359 



mH^lF^^^ 




°0' 1285 052, 



